Aus Open Day 6 - Things are about to get serious

·1 hr 13 min·5 clips

Coco Gauff turned the match around after Baptiste's explosive start, revealing her resilience under pressure.

It begins with hats. The panel are in Melbourne Park's Creator Lounge, and day six has handed them perfect weather, round-three tennis, Matt's delighted parents, and enough koala headwear for the whole thing to feel briefly like a family bit. The mood is sunny, then the tennis drags them back in. Coco Gauff's 3-6, 6-love, 6-3 win over Hayley Baptiste gives the show its first comeback thread, with the conversation turning to how players steady themselves once a match starts wobbling. Medvedev is where the room gets twitchy. One host had pictured Daniil Medvedev as someone with a real path toward the final. After this, that prediction needs a long look. He survived, and the panel do give him that. Finding a way through awkward, ugly matches is still one of the things he does best. But survival is not the same as looking right. The worry is the mess he made before escaping it: too little weight on the match, loose ground strokes, double faults, and a second set that flirted with full collapse. His opponent was no soft touch either. The panel describe a dangerous flat hitter, explosive from both sides and carrying more shot weight, so the escape has value. It just does not make the performance comforting. The box tension hangs around too. Medvedev's agitation, including the way he mocked his own camp, sends them back to those familiar warning signs, the kind that can make a match feel Benjamin Bonzi-esque before he somehow claws his way out. That counts as progress, just barely. Compared with the previous year, they like that he can still solve the chaos. They are not ready to call it form. Learner Tien makes the next step feel awkward. Medvedev has already gone five sets with Tien in Melbourne and lost last year, with other three-set epics in the mix, so arriving there after another long, ragged match sounds like a poor bargain. Andreeva brings the day home, jogging to the net after beating Elena Gabriella Rusa, with the Friends plug tucked in at the end. Day six leaves the tournament feeling less breezy and more serious.

As heard by us

A lively day-six Australian Open check-in, with Gauff's comeback and Medvedev's latest escape carrying the tension.

Australian Open day six has the feel of a tournament tightening up. Round three is underway, the Melbourne weather is behaving, and The Tennis Podcast keeps the day moving with its usual mix of match reading and media-centre nonsense, including Matt's parents having a very good…

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Want Gauff's comeback and Medvedev's wobble in one sensible sit-down from day six in Melbourne?

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