Melbourne, Jan 21 (IANS): Switzerland's 12th seed Belinda Bencic on Saturday stormed into the women's singles fourth round at the Australian Open with a hard-fought 6-2 7-5 victory over Camila Giorgi of Italy.

The two players have not met since 2019 but Bencic, the Tokyo Olympic Games gold medallist, enjoyed a 3-2 head-to-head advantage going into their sixth clash. She is also on an unbeaten run in January, having begun the 2023 season with a bang, defeating players like Garbine Muguruza, Caroline Garcia and Daria Kasatkina en route to the Adelaide International title.

But Giorgi has a reputation for slaying seeds and that set the scene for an intriguing clash in the Round of 32 at Melbourne Park on Saturday.

However, Bencic held the upper hand in the first set and broke Giorgi's serve in the third and seventh games to pocket the set 6-2. In the second set, the two players traded serve in the first two games before Bencic broke Giorgi's serve again in the third game. She survived a tough eighth game which went to advantage four times before Bencic held her serve to lead 5-3.

Giorgi broke Bencic's serve in the 10th game to make it 5-5 but the Swiss star broke right back in the 11th game and then held her serve to seal the set 6-4 and victory in one hour and 40 minutes.

This brings to an end to Giorgi's campaign in the Australian Open wherfe she was forced to deny allegations that she had used fake Covid-19 documents to participate in the 2022 event.

Giorgi, 31, fielded several questions about the allegations during a press conference following her victory over Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in the first round of the Australian Open on Tuesday.

"The doctor is being investigated, she had trouble in this [past] year with the law - a few times. I did all my vaccinations in different places so the trouble is with her, not me," she had claimed.