The men's quarterfinal match-ups that were featured on Tuesday at Melbourne Park were not all that competitive. In the first men's match of the day, Stan Wawrinka dumped Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in fairly uneventful straight sets. The line score in that match ended at 7-6, 6-4, 6-3 with Tsonga not putting up any kind of significant fight. The second men's single match of the night saw Roger federer advance to the semifinals with a straight-sets victory over Mischa Zverev 6-1, 7-5, 6-2.
Federer has dominated head-to-head
Wawrinka and Federer are both Swiss nationals, guaranteeing that Switzerland will have one representative in the men's championship match from Melbourne.
Federer leads the all-time series between he and Wawrinka at 18-3, mainly due to dominance in the earlier parts of both players' careers. However, Federer has also won their last two head-to-head meetings, including a match that bears some resemblance to the one that they are about to play. Federer and Wawrinka met in the semifinals of the 2015 US Open with the former winning in straight sets and no tiebreakers. The relevance of that result is that the US Open and the Australian Open are the hard-court Grand Slams and the US Open match was the same round as the upcoming match in Melbourne Park.
At stake for both players is another opportunity to gain some Grand Slam hardware. Wawrinka most recently won the US Open just last season, but he also boasts titles from the 2015 French Open and the 2014 Australian Open.
Federer has far more titles than Wawrinka, however his most recent Grand Slam victory came way back at Wimbledon 2012. Since then he has been back to some finals, however he has been stuck at 17 majors for 4.5 years now.
Rafael Nadal still in the hunt
The winner between Wawrinka and Federer will still have to win the championship match.
On the bottom half of the draw, the quarters have yet to be played. They will feature Milos Raonic vs. Rafael Nadal and Grigor Dimitrov vs. David Goffin. Between those players only Nadal has won a Grand Slam, the Spaniard a 14-time singles winner in majors including the 2009 Australian Open where he defeated Federer in the final.
