Top-ranked tennis player Carlos Alcaraz won his third-round match against World No. 32 Corentin Moutet 6-2, 6-4, 6-1 at the Australian Open on Friday, in what appeared to be a fairly convincing scoreline, but the match was anything but routine.

The left-handed Moutet mixed things up for Alcaraz, his blend of drop shots, slice, tweeners, half-volleys, angled volleys and even an underarm serve keeping Alcaraz on his toes.

“When you play someone like Corentin you don’t know what’s going to be next,” Alcaraz said in his on-court TV interview. “I had so much fun on the court. As you could see, we both pulled off great shots. Great points.”

Alcaraz laughed when he reflected on his surprise near the end of the first set, when he was fed up with tracking down drop shots and told his support team “I’m not going to run to get those”.

“I was tired to go forward to the net,” he said, adding that he’d looked at the stats and — with a mild exaggeration — thought “I’ve been to the net 55 times?” “I thought we were in a drop-shot competition, but he won!” There were moments of tension, like in the second set when Alcaraz surrendered a 3-0 lead when the 26-year-old Frenchman went on a four-game roll.

Alcaraz will next play on Sunday against No. 19 Tommy Paul, who advanced when Alejandro Davidovich Fokina retired with an injury after dropping the first two sets 6-1, 6-1.

In women’s singles, Aryna Sabalenka squeezed past Anastasia Potapova 7-6 (4), 7-6 (7). Top-ranked Sabalenka, chasing her third Australian Open title in four years, led 6-5 and 40-0 in the opening set but Potapova saved all three set points to send it to a tiebreaker. Sabalenka led 3-0 in the tiebreaker before Potapova leveled at 3-3.

Sabalenka held two more set points and clinched the set when she laced a backhand down the line. After trailing 4-0 in the second, Potapova rallied to level it at 4-4 and then again force a tiebreaker. Potapova had three set points in the tiebreaker, but Sabalenka rallied when the pressure was on.

“She played incredible tennis,” Sabalenka said. “I was always on the back foot. There are days where you just have to fight — it was such a fight.” Sabalenka won the Australian Open title in 2023 and 2024 and was the runner-up a year ago to Madison Keys. Sabalenka has also won the US Open twice.

Her fourth-round match will be against the rising star Victoria Mboko, who beat 14th-seeded Clara Tauson 7-6 (5), 5-7, 6-3.

Also read: Djokovic, Keys advance at Australian Open