Somewhere in a small warm-up room in the winding corridors of Melbourne Park, Roger Federer and Grigor Dimitrov sat side by side watching Lauren Davis force a deciding third set against Maria Sharapova.

Federer gave out a loud ‘woah, are you kidding me?’ reacting to a point and jumped out of his seat when a long rally was over. “That would’ve been the shot of the tournament,” the Swiss legend told Dimitrov and the rest of the group who were sat with them.

The pair continued to watch, having a laugh, kicking about a tennis ball, knowing that a short while later, they would step on Rod Laver Arena and become adversaries. Not a scene you’d typically expect from fierce competitors at the top level of the game.

Soon after, Federer walked off the court a 6-4, 3-6, 6-1, 6-4 third round winner over Dimitrov to improve his record against the Bulgarian to a clean 5-0, and become the first man in history to win 300 grand slam matches in the process.

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“Because we know each other quite well, yeah, we were pretty chilled going into the match,” the third-seeded Federer said of the amusing scene ahead of their match.

“We’ve both been well-prepared. Sometimes you don’t look much at the other guy. But with Grigor it’s different, like with other guys on tour. There’s many guys I would speak to before a match. That was the situation today.

“But I’m happy it still exists. We’re not that far down the road where it’s so professional where you can’t even look at the guy before you walk on court. We’re not there yet and I hope we’ll never get there.”