First male tennis player in the open era to reach a singles semi-final on Grand Slam debut

Aslan Karatsev’s (Russia) run to the semi-finals of the 2021 Australian Open saw the qualifier, ranked 114 in the world, dispatch three seeds in consecutive rounds: 8th seed Diego Schwartzman, 6-3, 6-3, 6-3 in Round 3 on 12 February; 20th seed Félix Auger-Aliassime, 3-6, 1-6, 6-3, 6-3, 6-4 in Round 4 on 14 February; and 18th seed Grigor Dimitrov, 2-6, 6-4, 6-1, 6-2 in the quarter-finals on 16 February. Karatsev met his match in the semi-finals, losing 3-6, 4-6, 2-6 to the eight-time Australian Open champion and No.1 seed Novak Djokovic – in search of a third consecutive title at Melbourne Park – on 18 February. Still, Karatsev’s five-match winning streak earned the 27-year-old a surprise pay day of A$850,000 ($658,433; £474,710) for his first Grand Slam appearance.

Karatsev breezed through the first two rounds at Melbourne Park without dropping a set, defeating Gianluca Mager 6-3, 6-3, 6-4 on 8 February and Egor Gerasimov 6-0, 6-1, 6-0 on 10 February. Before that, he’d come through three rounds of qualifying just to make the singles main draw.

Karatsev was the first qualifier to reach a Grand Slam semi-final since Vladimir Voltchkov (Wimbledon, 2000), and the first to do so at the Australian Open since Bob Giltinan in 1977. The Russian is the lowest-ranked male semi-finalist in Australia since Patrick McEnroe (also ranked 114) in 1991.