Djokovic to ‘reassess’ after exit in Melbourne

Novak Djokovic must go back to the drawing board after suffering a recurrence of his elbow problems in a fourth-round loss to Chung Hyeon at the Australian Open.

The former world number one came into the tournament without having played a match since Wimbledon and was compromised again in a 7-6 (7/4) 7-5 7-6 (7/3) defeat by 21-year-old Chung, who played an extraordinary match.

Djokovic received treatment at the end of the first set and grimaced his way through the rest of the match, and he must now decide what path he wishes to take. The six-time Australian Open champion left open the possibility of surgery when speaking ahead of the tournament, and he said of the elbow: “Unfortunately, it’s not great. At the end of the first set, it started hurting more. So I had to deal with it until the end of the match.

“I have to reassess everything with my team, medical team, coaches, and everybody, scan it, see what the situation is like,” said Djokovic. “It’s frustrating, of course, when you have that much time and you don’t heal properly. But it is what it is.”

For once, Roger Federer had to take a back seat but the defending champion is through to the last eight without having dropped a set, beating Hungarian Marton Fucsovics 6-4 7-6 (7/3) 6-2 in his latest outing.

There he will face a resurgent Tomas Berdych, who followed up his win over Juan Martin del Potro by defeating Fabio Fognini 6-1 6-4 6-4.

Meanwhile Angelique Kerber was bamboozled but not beaten by Hsieh Su-wei as the Australian Open title favourite battled her way into the quarter-finals.

Hsieh plays a completely different game from most of her rivals, relying not on power but a mixture of spins and slices and ball placement to drive opponents to distraction.

Her scalps in Melbourne had already included Wimbledon champion Garbine Muguruza and Agnieszka Radwanska, and for a long time it looked like Kerber might join them.

But the 2016 champion has a deep well of confidence after her unbeaten start to the season and kept her composure to turn the match around and win 4-6 7-5 6-2.

Kerber said: “I was always like, ‘this is impossible’ how she hit the ball. All the time she had the better answer. It’s unbelievable.”