In the first three rounds of the tournament, the top seed had been dominant, not dropping a set and conceding just six games in her last two matches.

Despite the momentum being on her side, Rybakina came in as the 22nd seed, having defeated American 13th seed Danielle Collins in the previous round.

Rybakina also won Wimbledon in 2022, showing the threat she could be - and when facing the most in-form women's tennis player since Serena Williams, the Kazakhstan player defeated Świątek 6-4, 6-4.

With one of the biggest victories of her career taking place today, Rybakina next faces 17th seed Jeļena Ostapenko of Latvia in the quarter-finals.

Ostapenko, who won the 2017 French Open, is also seeking her second Grand Slam title after beating American prodigy Coco Gauff 7-5, 6-3.

The colourful hard-hitter made it to the final eight for the first time in Melbourne, doing enough to beat the seventh seed despite having reservations about the accuracy of the line technology in her post-match interview.

In the most-anticipated tie in the men's fourth-round today, Stefanos Tsitsipas maintained his consistency at the Australian Open, defeating Italian 15th seed Jannik Sinner in five sets.

The Greek third seed has struggled with some Grand Slam form - never making the quarter-finals of Wimbledon or the US Open despite being one of the highest-ranked players in the world.

After a good start in winning the first two sets, the young Italian came back into the match and looked as if he could repeat the comeback he made against Hungarian Márton Fucsovics in the previous match.

Sinner managed to break Tsitsipas to take it to a deciding set, but the Greek said he made "minor adjustments" in the fifth to get a break of his own and from there, served out the match with the score finishing 6-4, 6-4, 3-6, 4-6, 6-3 after four hours.

Young Czech Jiří Lehečka will be looking to claim another scalp against him in the quarter-finals, having defeated sixth seed Félix Auger-Aliassime of Canada 4-6, 6-3, 7-6, 7-6.

Lehečka - who had never made it past the first round of a Grand Slam before this tournament, defeated British 11th seed Cameron Norrie previously, before knocking out another one of the favourites.

Auger-Aliassime's elimination completed the so-called "Netflix curse" - an observation on social media that all players involved in the first five episodes of the documentary series Breaking Point were exiting the tournament earlier than expected.

Now with Świątek out of the picture in the women's singles, American third seed Jessica Pegula is the highest-ranked player still in the draw, defeating 20th seed Barbora Krejčíková of Czech Republic 7-5, 6-2.

Her next opponent was confirmed in the last singles match of the day, with 24th seed Victoria Azarenka defeating unseeded Chinese player Zhu Lin 4-6, 6-1, 6-4, in yet another post-midnight finish, with the contest concluding at 2.15am local time.

After beating neutral Daniil Medvedev in the previous round of the men's singles, American 29th seed Sebastian Korda defeated Polish 10th seed Hubert Hurkacz 3-6, 6-3, 6-2, 1-6, 7-6, meaning he next plays neutral 18th seed Karen Khachanov who thrashed Japanese 31st seed Yoshihito Nishioka 6-0, 6-0, 7-6 in under two hours.