Organisers relieved as Sinner avoids late late show

MELBOURNE : Australian Open organisers were breathing a sigh of relief as Tuesday's schedule concluded at the relatively 'early' time of just before 1.30am but scheduling issues were again on the agenda for the year's first Grand Slam.

Coco Gauff's clash with Marta Kostyuk ran for over three hours meaning Novak Djokovic and Taylor Fritz did not even get onto Rod Laver Arena until almost 5pm local time - much later than they would have expected.

The Serbian top seed and his American opponent battled for close to four hours, meaning the evening session opener between Aryna Sabalenka and Barbora Krejcikova began two hours late at 9pm.

The fact that Sabalenka won 6-2 6-3 in 71 minutes at least enabled men's fourth seed Jannik Sinner and fifth seed Andrey Rublev to start their duel at 10.30pm.

Sinner prevailed in straight sets so a repeat of last week's late show when Daniil Medvedev came from two sets down to beat Emil Ruusuvuori in a match that finished at 3.40am was avoided.

With Djokovic and Fritz locked in battle, Sabalenka said she and her opponent had been given the choice to move their match to the Margaret Court Arena, rather than Rod Laver.

"But we just decided to see how the Djokovic-Fritz match will go. If it's going to be too long, then we agreed for the possibility to be moved," the defending champion said.

"Novak won the third and fourth sets, so we just went on court as normal."

The 25-year-old said it was important for a quarter-final to be held on the main showcourt.

"Of course it would be much better to start at 7pm but you can't control other matches," Sabalenka added.

"I just tried to focus on myself and wait a bit longer. It's not that bad ... It is how it is and we have to adapt quickly to the conditions. We did