MELBOURNE – Qualifier Menelaos Efstathiou of Cyprus has overcome a one-set loss in all of his three main draw matches at Melbourne Park to find a path to the Australian Open quarterfinals.
On Wednesday, the 125th-ranked Efstathiou upset sixth seed Duarte Vale of Portugal 67 (2) 64 64 to reach his first Grand Slam quarterfinal at his first Grand Slam tournament.
The 2 hour, 32 minute match found Efstathiou saving nine of 14 break points he faced, while breaking Vale on seven of 13 chances presented.
“I started good the second set so I believed I could make it,” he said. “I continued playing and it went very good. I never played him before, but I saw him at many other tournaments, so I knew a bit how he played.
“This is a really big experience for me,” he added, smiling.
When you’re a Cypriot junior there’s no doubt that Marcos Baghdatis, the 2006 Australian Open finalist, is the player to look up to as you hope to find a path into the pros. It was only a few days ago that Efstathiou had the occasion to formally meet Baghdatis for the first time.
“I’ve only known him because when I was small I used to ball boy for him at the Davis Cup, but I never talked to him so much,” Efstathiou said. “When I came here I went to talk to him for a couple of minutes. I introduced myself to him because he didn’t know me as a person.”
Of further excitement for Efstathiou is that in just over a week he will be representing Cyprus against Turkey in a Davis Cup home tie for the first time.
“That will be a very big experience,” he said. “I will play the singles and it will be so exciting. The people will cheer for us.”
Efstathiou wil play fourth seed Yshai Oliel of Israel in the quarterfinals. Other quarterfinal pairings are top seed Wu Yibing of China against Alexey Zakharov of Russia, 15th seed Zsombor Piros of Hungary against Matteo Martineau of France, and fifth seed Corentin Moutet of France against Emil Ruusuvuori of Finland.
IFT