MELBOURNE: Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi reached his maiden Australian Open quarter-finals on Sunday when the Pakistan tennis icon and his Polish partner Marcin Matkowski’ were awarded a walkover against Radu Albot of Moldova and South Korea’s Chung Hyeon.

The unseeded pairing of Albot and Hyeon failed to show up for the scheduled third-round clash at the Show Court No. 3, presumably since Hyeon wanted to get ample rest ahead of Monday’s fourth-round men’s singles clash against former world No. 1 Novak Djokovic and six-time former Australian Open champion who is seeded 14th here.

Up next for Aisam and Matkowski are the Bryan twins after the sixth-seeded Americans, Mike and Bob, won 6-7 (27), 7-6 (7-5), 6-3 against the French duo of Fabrice Martin and Jeremy Chardy at the Hisense Arena.

The quarter-final between these two pairs is slated for early Thursday at 5:00am (PST).

Meanwhile, Aisam and his Chinese partner Zhaoxaun Yang made a swift exit from the mixed doubles event on Sunday after losing their first-round match in straight sets against Michael Venus of New Zealand and Taiwan’s Hao-Ching Chan at Show Court No. 3.

Venus and Chan needed only 55 minutes to win 6-3, 6-4.

Published in Dawn, January 22nd, 2018