Sloane Stephens — Getty ImagesBefore last week, if you were checking out the 2013 Australian Open draw, a quarterfinal match-up of Serena Williams and Sloane Stephens would have been a pretty exciting prospect.

Williams, the 15-time Grand Slam champion, has been an inspiration for Stephens, who at 19 seems to be the "next big thing" in American tennis. After her 6-1, 3-6, 7-5 win over Bojana Jovanovski, Stephens was asked about the potential of a quarterfinal meeting with Williams (Serena still had to play her fourth round match against Maria Kirilenko, that she won easily 6-2, 6-0) and the 19-year-old seemed downright giddy about the possibility. Stephens, who has never made it to a Grand Slam quarterfinals nor beat Williams in a match) mentioned that before the fourth round Williams reached out to her and mentioned she needed to make more noise on the court (i.e., grunting during shots).

It was a fun little moment that showed just how excited Stephens must be to have made it this far in Melbourne and how these

Novak Djokovic — Getty ImagesThere are plenty of terms you could use to describe Novak Djokovic. In a former life we knew him as a guy that couldn't always get it done, but the guy is a stud now and is looking to become the only player in the Open era to win the Australian Open three times in a row.

And now, maybe we can call him The Hulk? Novak ripped off his own shirt after beating Stanislas Wawrinka 1-6, 7-5, 6-4, 6-7 (5), 12-10 in an epic five-set match on Sunday in Rod Laver Arena.

The result of the ripping? Novak, ripped up, with photo and video below.

Novak Djokovic — Getty ImagesIt seems any match these days that goes the distance is automatically considered "a classic." A top champion gets shoved to the ropes and critics are quick to glorify what happened, win or lose, but on Sunday at Melbourne Park, Novak Djokovic and Stanislas Wawrinka gave us what is sure to be the match of this Australian Open.

Djokovic is the two-time defending champion, attempting to become the first man in the Open era to win the Australian Open three times in a row. Wawrinka is the 15th ranked player in the field, hoping to just survive for as long as possible before going up against one of the big boys.

And survive he almost did. Djokovic dropped the first set in epic fashion before bouncing back to win to win the second 7-5 and the third 6-4. When that happens with a guy like Novak you can basically turn off the television and catch up on a few more hours of sleep, but Wawrinka wouldn't go away. The fourth set went to a tiebreaker that Wawrinka snagged 7-5 and here we were, in the

Roger Federer — Getty ImagesThere had been plenty of mouthing out of the 20-year-old Bernard Tomic heading into his third-round match with Roger Federer. Tomic, a young Australian with a lengthy wingspan and even bigger ego, had spent the better part of two days saying how much he was excited to play Federer and hopefully take down arguably the greatest player of all time.

Before the match, Tomic gathered his inner Rory Sabbatini when he said that "this is the perfect time to play (Federer)," hinting that he felt the icon was losing a step at the ripe tennis age of 31. But if you've watched Federer play these early matches at the Australian Open, you know that he's hitting the ball with as much conviction as he has to start the season in years, and the tone was set in the first game of the match. Federer promptly broke Tomic's serve and basically closed the door on an upset possibility.

Federer went on to win his match 6-4, 7-6 (7-4), 6-1 and showed exactly why it isn't smart to tout off to a legend.

Now two

It seems these days when playing Novak Djokovic there isn't much you can do to make him miss a shot and it appears that going Randy Moss on him doesn't work either.

[Related: Roger Federer manhandles local favorite Bernard Tomic at Australian Open]

That's what Radek Stepanek did in his third round match against the two-time defending champion. Stepanek approached the net, hit a poor volley that was basically dead meat and then turned around in hopes that giving him the half moon might be good enough to throw off the No. 1 ranked player.

It didn't, and even though Djokovic rolled in straight sets, it was a match full of fun antics from Stepanek.

h/t Game On!

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It's not often we get such a high profile match this early in a Grand Slam week, but that's what happens when Venus Williams' ranking drops to 25. The seven-time Slam winner hasn't made a quarterfinals in one of the big four events since the 2010 U.S. Open, but that doesn't stop Venus going up against Maria Sharapova from being a lot of fun in the first week in Melbourne.

Sharapova entered her third round match having not dropped a single game, and while this match looked exciting on paper, it was pretty one-sided in the Russian's favor. Sharapova won the opening set 6-1, followed that up with a second set win of 6-3 and the match lasted just 1 hour and 19 minutes.

If you're looking at possible favorites in the second week of the Australian Open in the women's side, you'd be hard-pressed to find someone hitting the ball as well as Sharapova is right now. Sure, she had just 17 winners in the two-set win over Venus, but she sure seems to be seeing the ball incredibly well early on in

Laura Robson — Getty ImagesOn a day that can only be described as scorching in Melbourne on Thursday, one match seemed to stand out ahead of the others. That was the No. 9 seeded Petra Kvitova taking on 18-year-old Laura Robson. The British rising star made it to the fourth round at the U.S. Open last year and has shown some signs that she's ready to take the next step, and her play in the second round at Rod Laver showed just that.

After dropping the first set 2-6, Robson bounced back with a solid 6-3 second set win to set up both players for a lengthy third set. The best part might have been how Robson scratched back in a third set that saw her go own 3-0 to start, and ended with her serving out the match to win the final set 11-9.

It definitely wasn't the prettiest of matches, especially with how poorly Kvitova was serving the entire time, but the English teenager is moving on in one of the biggest upsets yet of this 2013 Australian Open.

Sam Stosur — Getty ImagesI can't even imagine what the pressure must be like to be an Australian with a chance to win the Australian Open. Lleyton Hewitt has been dealing with this all his life (it might be why this Grand Slam seems to be the one he struggles at the most), and we've seen how the English players deal with Wimbledon when they have a chance to finally break that drought.

And then we have Samatha Stosur. The 28-year-old Aussie with the massive guns and the 2011 U.S. Open crown is Australia's best chance at breaking the drought that has kept an Australian woman out of the winner's circle at this event since 1978. That was, until Wednesday.

Stosur, the No. 9 seed, was playing Jie Zheng in her second round match and after splitting the first two sets it seemed that Stosur had finally found her game and was rolling to the third round.

But then it happened. Stosur, up 5-2, was broken on her own serve, giving Zheng some hope. And after the 29-year-old held her own serve to get it to 5-4, Stosur again