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Home crowd favourites Lleyton Hewitt and Sam Groth will look to keep their Australian Open doubles dream alive when they play Juan Sebastian Cabal and Robert Farah in the quarter-finals. Join The Roar for live scores from around 5pm (AEDT).
Hewitt, who is retired but making more comebacks than John Farnham, and Groth, who is about to retire, have been one of the good news stories of the tournament so far.
The 36-year-old Hewitt has had a huge summer for a retired player, playing doubles with Jordan Thompson in Brisbane, Fast4 in Sydney and the Tie Break Tens event a few nights later in Melbourne.
He is anything but short on match practice, while Groth has played plenty of doubles at Davis Cup level for Australia.
The pair have in fact combined at Davis Cup on two occasions, the more notable coming against Great Britain in 2015 away from home when they almost snatched a victory in the crucial third rubber.
Hewitt of course is current Davis Cup captain, but the pair came away with a convincing straight sets win in the first round at Melbourne Park, before being stretched to three by Jean-Julien Rojer and Horia Tecau in the second round.
With a retirement just 22 minutes into their third round match, they will be fresh and raring to go for this quarter-final.
It won’t come easy though as they take on a Columbian duo ranked 11 in the world. Their biggest achievement as a pair in the last 12 months was a French Open semi-final appearance in 2017 before falling to Ryan Harrison and Michael Venus.
Farah and Cabal have shown good form throughout the summer though, winning a match in Sydney and being yet to drop a set in Melbourne, going past some high-quality combinations on the way to this match.
The teams have never met before this match and the winner will face sixth seeds and some of the best doubles players of all time, Bob and Mike Bryan in the semi-finals of the tournament.
Prediction
Despite the seeding of Cabal and Farah, they really didn’t look like world beaters until the third round. Hewitt and Groth will have the crowd behind them and a stack more experience on the big stage, so should get the job done.
Hewitt and Groth in three sets.
Be sure to join The Roar for live scores of the men’s doubles quarter-finals from 5pm (AEDT) and don’t forget to add a comment in the section below.