MELBOURNE, Jan. 25 (Xinhua) -- Friday's Melbourne Park saw Andy Murray beating Roger Federer for the first time in a Grand Slam match to set up Djokovic final, and top-seeded pair Sara Errani/Robert Vinci from Italy took the women's doubles title.
London Olympics and U.S. Open champion Andy Murray reached his third Australian Open final after beating 17-time Grand Slam champion Roger Federer 6-4, 6-7(5), 6-3, 6-7(2), 6-2 in four hours.
Murray dominated for the most part of the semifinal but Federer's brilliance kept him alive.
The Scot fired down 21 aces, only for the Swiss to dominate the two tiebreaks.
After failing to serve out the match in the fourth set, it looked as though Murray might have missed his chance when it came down to a fifth.
However, just like he did in winning his first major title at the U.S. Open, Murray rose to the occasion in the deciding set and raced away with it.
The third-seeded Scot will face defending champion and world No. 1 Novak Djokovic in Sunday's final. It will be a rematch of the U.S. Open final, in which Murray beat the Serb for his maiden Grand Slam title.
Murray will be the first man in the Open era to notch his first two major titles back to back if he wins the final. Otherwise, could be the first player to win three consecutive Australian Open titles in the Open era.
The Italian pair Sara Errani/Robert Vinci won their first Australian Open women's doubles title by beating local heroines Ashleigh Barty and Casey Dellacque 6-2, 3-6, 6-2.
Barty and Dellacqua broke the Italian pair in the eighth game of the second set, then held serve in the next game to force a deciding third set. The Australian pair broke Errani and Vinci to start the deciding set, but the Italians recovered quickly and dominated for the match.
Italy's Errani and Vinci played a disciplined game in the final, with 22 unforced errors against 42 for the Australians, who were in their first major final.
After today's victory, Errani and Vinci have won three of the last four Grand Slam tournaments, and lack only victory at Wimbledon to join the three players this century who have completed a career Grand Slam in women's doubles.
Errani and Vinci, the reigning US and French Open champions, lost in three sets to the Russian tandem of Svetlana Kuznetsova and Vera Zvonareva last year at Melbourne Park.
Barty and Dellacqua were the first all-Australian women's pair since 1977 to play in a final at their home Grand Slam event, in only their third tournament together.
The 16-year-old Barty was attempting to become the youngest Grand Slam champion since Martina Hingis won the Australian Open singles title in 1997.
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