"I'm excited to enter the second week. I look forward to the battles because obviously the opponents are higher-ranked,"Fritz

With challenging quarterfinals to navigate in Melbourne on Tuesday, Novak Djokovic and Aryna Sabalenka will continue their quests to win the Australian Open.

The world number two from Belarus takes on the consistently reliable Czech player Barbora Krejcikova, while the top-seeded Serb Djokovic plays American 12th seed Taylor Fritz.

Aiming for his eleventh championship and a record-tying 25th Grand Slam victory, Djokovic easily defeated Adrian Mannarino in the fourth round, dropping just three games.

Though Fritz defeated Stefanos Tsitsipas, the runner-up from the previous year, to set up their afternoon match at Rod Laver Arena, he expects Fritz to provide a tougher test.

"I'm excited to enter the second week. I look forward to the battles because obviously the opponents are higher-ranked," said the 36-year-old.

"I play Fritz. There's no easy matches, no doubt about that.

"But the experience of knowing what I need to do with my own body, with my training, with the maintaining of the kind of level, I guess tennis-related specifics that I need to work on, and also recovery has been on point."

The winner will meet either in-form Italian fourth seed Jannik Sinner or Russia's fifth seed Andrey Rublev, who face off in the evening.

Both are targeting their first taste of a Melbourne Park semi-final.

Like Djokovic, Sabalenka was ruthless in her fourth-round match and has conceded just 11 games so far to position herself as the red-hot title favourite.

But she too is expecting a more thorough examination from ninth seed Krejcikova.

"We had a lot of matches, Barbara. She's a good player. I believe she's returning from injury, which makes her really driven. Always a hard fight," she remarked.

Either fourth-seeded and US Open champion Coco Gauff or unseeded Ukrainian Marta Kostyuk will be waiting for the winner.

Similar to Sabalenka, Gauff is a skilled player who indicated that she had taken lessons from her triumph at Flushing Meadows the previous year.

"I'm really glad to be here and in this position. I'm hoping to keep pushing for more," she said.

End//voice7news.tv