Toronto’s Sharon Fichman is heading to the women’s doubles quarter-finals at the Australian Open.
Fichman and Giuliana Olmos of Mexico beat Canadian Leylah Annie Fernandez and Great Britain’s Heather Watson 6-3, 6-2 in the third round on Monday.
Fichman and Olmos lost both opening games of the two sets played, but didn’t trail at any other point in the match. They needed 45 minutes to win the first set, and only 32 minutes more to win the second set.
It’s the first time the 30-year-old Fichman has reached the quarter-finals of any major tournament in her senior career. She won the 2006 Australian Open junior women’s doubles final with Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.
Fichman also hadn’t won a match at a Grand Slam since 2014 before the Australian Open.
Fichman and Olmos will face against No. 3 seeds Barbora Krejcikova and Katerina Siniakova of the Czech Republic in the next round.
Fernandez, from Laval, Que., also lost in the opening round of singles play at the Australian Open last week.
Later Monday, Ottawa native Gabriela Dabrowski was scheduled to play her second-round mixed doubles match with Croatian Mate Pavic.
The third-seeded duo was to face American Bethanie Mattek-Sands and Great Britain’s Jamie Murray for a berth to the quarter-finals.