said in his post match on court interview<\/a>.<\/p>\nThis win puts Michelson in good company as he becomes the youngest American since Pete Sampras and four-time AO champion Andre Agassi to record multiple top-20 wins at a Grand Slam.<\/p>\n
Khachanov, a semifinalist at Melbourne Park in 2023, was widely expected to be a significant obstacle to home favourite Alex de Minaur\u2019s quarterfinal hopes. However, Michelsen will now stand in de Minaur\u2019s way after the Australian eighth seed battled past Francisco Cerundolo in his third-round match later on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Michelsen\u2019s dream run has significant implications for his ATP ranking. Entering the tournament ranked #42, he has already secured 200 ranking points by reaching the fourth round. This performance is projected to elevate him to a new career-high ranking, potentially breaking into the top 35. Of course, he will not want his tournament to end here.<\/p>\n
De Minaur will be the favourite going into their match, and will have the support of the Australian crowd, but Michelsen has not yet been overawed by the occasion. Could another shock be on the cards?<\/p>\n
Main photo credit: Robert Deutsch-USA TODAY Sports<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rising American star Alex Michelsen has pulled off another surprise victory to reach the fourth round of the Australian Open. The 20-year-old backed up his first-round upset of world #11 and 2023 Australian Open runner-up Stefanos Tsitsipas with a straight-sets demolition of 19th seed Karen Khachanov on Saturday, winning 6-3 7-6 6-2. With these two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4590,"featured_media":78541,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"1","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[42694,18656,844,304],"class_list":["post-78531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australian-open","tag-2025-australian-open","tag-alex-michelsen","tag-karen-khachanov","tag-stefanos-tsitsipas"],"modified_by":"Jim Smith","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4590"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78531"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78531\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78542,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78531\/revisions\/78542"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}