Australian Open: Dart v Halep, Kyrgios v Simon, and more – live!
- Updates from the evening session on the fourth day
- Caroline Wozniacki: ‘It’s crazy it’s coming to an end’
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7.35am GMT
As touched on in the preamble, Heather Watson suffered a one-sided defeat by Belgium’s 16th seed, Elise Mertens, 6-3, 6-0. Watson is the world No 75, so there’s no shame in losing to a player significantly higher than her in the rankings, but having produced a gutsy performance against Kristyna Pliskova in the first round, she’ll be disappointed not to have shown more fight against Mertens, whom she did beat in Hobart only last week.
7.27am GMT
But I digress. Five matches have been completed on the men’s side so far: Dominic Thiem was in plenty of trouble, two sets to one down against Australia’s Alex Bolt, before finishing with a flourish, 6-2, 5-7, 6-7 (5), 6-1, 6-2; Alex Zverev secured a welcome straight-sets win, 7-6 (5), 6-4, 7-5 over Egor Gerasimov of Belarus; the Latvian enigma that is Ernests Gulbis, who upset the rising Canadian Félix Auger-Aliassime in round one, bumped out the former Brit Aljaz Bedene also in straight sets; there’s been another win for the exciting young Australian Alexei Popyrin, 6-2, 7-6, 6-2 against Spain’s Jaume Munar; while last year’s US Open runner-up Daniil Medvedev got a bloodied nose – quite literally – but came through 7-5, 6-1, 6-3 against the Spanish qualifier Pedro Martínez.