Australian Open 2019, Day 5 Results: Men's and Women's Round Up

The Australian Open 2019 continued today, with the bottom half playing their third-round matches on the courts of Melbourne Park. Over 50 matches took place overall.

To kick things off on Rod Laver Arena, Australia's Ashleigh Barty continued her fine run of form, defeating Greek sensation Maria Sakkari, 7-5, 6-1 in straight sets. She will now take on Maria Sharapova in the fourth round on Saturday. Sharapova played out an exceptional match against defending champion Caroline Wozniacki, and sent her packing, defeating her in three tight sets - 6-4, 4-6, 6-3.

Angelique Kerber dominated from start to finish as she thrashed Australia's Kimberly Birrell 6-1, 6-0 in under an hour. The three-time Grand Slam champion from Germany will take on USA's Danielle Rose Collins on Saturday.

Meanwhile, USA's Sloane Stephens and Czech Republic's Petra Kvitova won their matches in straight sets to move into the next round. Kvitova will take on Amanda Anisimova while Stephens will take on Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.

Moving on to the men's singles, Roger Federer cruised through to the fourth round with a relatively easy straight-set win over 21-year-old Taylor Fritz from the USA. He won his encounter in less than an hour and a half, defeating the youngster 6-2, 7-5, 6-2. He will now take on Greek rising sensation Stefanos Tsitsipas in the fourth round on Saturday. Tsitsipas was on top of his game as well as he defeated Nikoloz Basilashvili 6-3, 3-6, 7-6(7), 6-4.

Tomas Berdych continued his fine run of form as he defeated 18th seed Diego Schwartzman of Argentina 5-7, 6-3, 7-5, 6-4 to move on to the next round. He will take on 17-time Grand Slam champion Rafael Nadal in the next round. Nadal had it easy against Aussie youngster Alex de Minaur in the third round today as he won the encounter in straight sets 6-1, 6-2, 6-4. Interestingly, this was the same scoreline when the two faced off at Wimbledon last year.

Meanwhile, Roberto Bautista Agut, Frances Tiafoe, and Grigor Dimitrov, all continued their fine run of form as well, defeating Karen Khachanov, Andreas Seppi, and Thomas Fabbiano respectively. Tiafoe was the only one tested as he won his match in 5 sets against the veteran from Italy.

Tiafoe and Dimitrov will take on each other in the next round while Bautista Agut will take on Marin Cilic in the next round.

The Croat, who was the runner-up last year, saved one match point and came back from two sets down en-route to his incredible 5-set victory over Spanish veteran Fernando Verdasco. The Spaniard had a match point on his serve in the fourth set tie-break but bottled it with a double-fault. That seemed to have mentally affected him in the fifth set as Cilic ran away with it 6-3. The scoreline of the match was 4-6, 3-6, 6-1, 7-6(8), 6-3 in favour of Cilic.

The third round of matches in the men's and women's singles will end tomorrow. Rohan Bopanna and Leander Paes, too, will take the court for their respective mixed doubles encounters.