Defending champs Dabrowski and Pavic move into Melbourne mixed doubles quarterfinals

MELBOURNE, Australia -- No.1 seeds and defending champions Gabriela Dabrowski and Mate Pavic kept their hopes alive for a second straight Australian Open mixed doubles title on Tuesday, easing past Chan Hao-ching and Jean-Julien Rojer, 6-4, 6-3, to advance to the quarterfinals.

Canada's Dabrowski and Pavic of Croatia needed just 66 minutes to get past Chan of Chinese Taipei and Rojer of the Netherlands and book their spot in the final eight.

It was Rojer who dropped serve at the very end of the opening frame to give the top seeds a one-set lead. Serving at 5-4, the Dutchman double faulted to give Dabrowski and Pavic two break points. Though Rojer saved the first with a service winner, Pavic hit a bruising forehand winner on deciding point to sew up the first set.

The defending champions had 14 winners in the first set, double what their opponents had, and their momentum continued in the second set as they cracked open a 5-2 lead. An overhead by Rojer saved a match point and pulled Chan and him to 5-3, but Pavic closed out the match in the following game with three huge serves.

Three other highly-seeded teams also picked up wins on Tuesday as the quarterfinal lineup was completed. No.2 seeds Nicole Melichar of the United States and Brazil's Bruno Soares claimed a second-round victory over Hungarians Timea Babos and Marton Fucsovics, 6-3, 6-2, in just 47 minutes.

No.3 seeds Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic and Rajeev Ram of the United States had a more difficult time advancing, as they needed to get through a match tiebreak before overcoming the wild card team from Poland, Iga Swiatek and Lukasz Kubot, 6-3, 4-6, [10-5].

Finally, another close match went the way of the seeded team on Tuesday, as No.5 seeds Anna-Lena Groenefeld of Germany and Colombia's Robert Farah squeaked past wild cards Samantha Stosur of Australia and India's Leander Paes, 4-6, 6-4, [10-8]. Stosur had won her women's doubles quarterfinal match just hours beforehand.

In the top half of the quarterfinal draw, Dabrowski and Pavic will face María José Martínez Sánchez of Spain and Great Britain's Neal Skupski, while Krejcikova and Ram will meet Groenefeld and Farah.

The bottom half quarterfinals pit Melichar and Soares against No.6 seeds Abigail Spears and Juan Sebastian Cabal, and reigning US Open champions Bethanie Mattek-Sands and Jamie Murray will face off against the all-Australian wild card tandem of Astra Sharma and John-Patrick Smith.