Karen Khachanov advances past injured Sebastian Korda and into Australian Open semifinals

Karen Khachanov advanced to the semifinals of the Australian Open on Tuesday night as American Sebastian Korda was forced to retire from their quarterfinal match due to a wrist injury.

Khachanov was leading 7-6 (5), 6-3, 3-0 when Korda walked to the Russian's changeover chair and shook his hand.

“Back to back semifinals at a Grand Slam feels great, you know,” Khachanov said in his on-court interview. “Obviously not the way you want to finish the match—I think until a certain point it was very competitive, a very good battle.

“Sebastian beat one of my friends, Daniil, in three sets, and in five sets against Hurkacz. You know, he’s playing great tennis. So, give applause to him.

“But I’m feeling good, to be honest. Really happy, really happy about my level, about the way I compete, and looking forward to the semifinals here in Australia for the first time.”

The two were neck-and-neck for the first set and a half, with Korda battling back from an early 5-2 deficit before Khachanov closed the set out in a tie-break. They then traded holds for the first five games of the second set.

But after holding for a 3-2 lead Korda had a trainer visit to tend to his wrist, and he wouldn’t win another game, Khachanov winning the next seven games in a row to take the second set and go up 3-0 in the third.

Khachanov has now reached his first two Grand Slam semifinals at back-to-back Grand Slams, having gotten to the final four at last year's US Open as well before falling to Casper Ruud.

Korda said afterwards that it wasn’t a new injury.

“I had it a little bit in Adelaide a couple weeks ago, but then it went away,” he told reporters. “During the matches, it was completely fine—then just one kind of mis-hit return, and it started to bother me a lot after that.

“It was in the second set, early.”

The 22-year-old American, who will now have the injury evaluated, has to be proud of the run he put together Down Under, taking out No. 8-ranked, two-time Australian Open finalist Daniil Medvedev in the third round and No. 11-ranked Hubert Hurkacz in the fourth round en route to the first Grand Slam quarterfinal of his career.

“Yeah of course, there are a lot of positives. I mean, way more positives than even negatives,” he said.

“Today was tough, but hopefully it’s nothing serious and I can take care of it so I don’t have it in the future. Like I said, I don’t know what it is, but yeah, obviously a lot of positives. Still a great tournament. My first quarterfinal in a Grand Slam.

“You know, I’m going to go forward with my head held high and keep working.”