Tsitsipas breaks duck in Melbourne semis

Stefanos Tsitsipas had a harder time strictly following all of the rules than he did outplaying his opponent in the early going, then recovered after blowing two match points late in the third set, and eventually reached the final at the Australian Open in Melbourne for the first time by beating Karen Khachanov 7-6 (2) 6-4 6-7 (6) 6-3 last night.

The No 3-seeded Tsitsipas had been 0-3 in semifinals at Melbourne Park, but he finally went a step further to get to the second grand slam championship match of his career.

It looked easy for the better part of three sets against Khachanov, but Tsitsipas got broken when serving for the match at 5-4 in the third, then failed to convert either chance to end it when he went up 6-4 in the ensuing tiebreaker.

Khachanov collected four consecutive points there, erasing the match points with a pair of booming forehands. Tsitsipas, though, regained his footing quickly, grabbing a 3-0 lead in the fourth.

Now Tsitsipas will face Novak Djokovic or unseeded American Tommy Paul in the men’s singles final tomorrow.

Tsitsipas’ other run to a major final came at the 2021 French Open, when he grabbed the first two sets before blowing that big lead and losing to Djokovic in five.

For about 21⁄ hours at Rod Laver Arena yesterday, the 24-year-old from Greece showed a game that was too versatile, and strokes that were too consistent from all over the court, for the 18th-seeded Khachanov, a Russian who is now 0-2 in grand slam semifinals.

The biggest issue for Tsitsipas in that span, truthfully, appeared to be trying to deal with the watchful eyes of the match officials monitoring the 25-second clock and the position of his feet.

Chair umpire Nico Helwerth’s first warning for a time violation came while Tsitsipas served for the first set at 5-3, love-15. Perhaps distracted, he double-faulted to trail love-30 and eventually got broken there.

The serve clock elapsed again at 5-5, love-15, and the second infraction resulted in an automatic fault.

Again, Tsitsipas then doublefaulted, again to fall behind love-30, but this time he managed to hold serve, and he was by far superior in the ensuing tiebreaker, able to ignore a foot-fault call that came at 3-1.