Michelsen, who ousted 11th seed Stefanos Tsitsipas in his first match at Melbourne Park, secured a second Top 20 scalp. The 20-year-old capitalized on all four of his break points against 19th seed Karen Khachanov, the 2023 semifinalist, in his 6-3, 7-6 (5), 6-2 victory. Michelsen finished with a +12 differential to improve upon his third-round showing here a year earlier.
“Only got broken only once today. In three out of five, that’s very good for me,” said the world No. 42. “I’ve played the pressure points pretty well. Tie-break, 7-5, then I hit two winners from 5-All. I don’t know where it came from. It just kind of happened.”
Tien, coming off a spellbinding four-hour, 49-minute upset over world No. 5 Daniil Medvedev that wrapped in a final-set tiebreaker just before 3 a.m. Friday and left Michelsen to concede, “I can’t disclose how late I was up”, impressively had more left in the reserves than Corentin Moutet.
