Already a Frenchman in the quarterfinals in Melbourne. Before Alizé Cornet, who will try his luck next night, Gaël Monfils joins the quarter-finals of the Australian Open for the first time. The French number one managed to get rid of the Serbian Miomir Kecmanovic in three sets: 7-5, 7-6, 6-3. The fight between the two players lasted 2 hours and 35 minutes with an elbow-to-elbow duel in the first two sets.
The high point was undoubtedly the second set, which lasted an hour and punctuated by a tie-break won 7-4. Until the last games, Kecmanovic tried to reverse the situation but the first two sets won at the end of the suspense by Monfils got the better of his mentality in the third and last act.
If he had emerged victorious from their one and only confrontation a few months ago at Bercy (4-6, 7-5, 6-3), the Frenchman knew that his Serbian counterpart could cause him problems. “In training, Kecmanovic always beat me. He plays fast from the back, he doesn’t ask a lot of questions. He has a better backhand. He attacks, he has nothing to lose. He wants to do well, he’s a young player who plays well, ”he said before the match.
In sparkling form over the first three rounds of the competition, Gaël Monfils had more difficulty in this round of 16 against a Kecmanovic wishing to honor his compatriot Novak Djokovic, deprived of participation because he was not vaccinated. Despite mixed statistics with 54 winners and 48 unforced errors, the 35-year-old French player has still not given up a set in the competition.
Revenge against Berrettini in the quarterfinals?
It is the tenth time in his long career that Gaël Monfils has reached this stage of the competition in a Grand Slam tournament, the second time in Melbourne after 2016 when he was eliminated by the Canadian Milos Raonic. The last time he was among the last eight tennis players in the running dates back to the US Open 2019. He was then dismissed by Matteo Berrettini. In the next round, he could just have the opportunity to take his revenge against the Italian who faces Pablo Carreno Busta in the eighth.
