Australian James Duckworth has gone down fighting in his Grand Slam debut campaign, beaten in four sets by men's No.9 seed Janko Tipsarevic in the second round.
Duckworth, who turns 20 on Saturday, put up an excellent fight in just his fifth Tour match, taking the first set before succumbing to the experienced Serb 3-6 6-2 7-6(7-5) 6-4 in a match which lasted three hours and 11 minutes.
Tipsarevic, playing in his seventh Australian Open campaign, was forced to call on some of his best tennis, with 42 winners to just 31 unforced errors as he booked just his second third round appearance at the Australian Open.
A clash with either No.17 seed Richard Gasquet or Kazakh qualifier Andrey Golubev looks a little more straight forward than Tipsarevic's last third round appearance here when he was beaten in a five-set epic by Roger Federer in 2008.
Duckworth burst out of the blocks with breaks in the second and sixth games to immediately have his much higher-credentialed opponent under pressure.
He closed out the first set in 34 minutes, but the match was quickly back on level terms when Tipsarevic broke in the fourth and eighth game of the second set.
Duckworth was again broken in the eighth game of the third set, but fought back straight away and pushed it to a tie-breaker which would prove crucial to the momentum of the match.
The Australian got a mini-break to lead 3-2 but let his advantage slip when he double faulted at 5-5 and Tipsarevic closed out the set.
The world No.250 didn't get a look in from that point, with Tipsarevic failing to give up even a break point in the fourth set, while breaking his opponent in the fifth game to set up the win.
While Duckworth would have been disappointed to give up his chance at a third round Grand Slam match, he can feel he has made giant strides in the past month having secured his first two wins at Tour level.