👋 Welcome back to The Daily Theory, our morning rundown to help you stay on top of your favorite sport. I’m Allen McDuffee, your guide to all things tennis.
On tap today, we’ve got: a strange day of tennis, Matteo Berrettini vs. Holger Rune, the future of Kokkinakis, one cranky Novak Djokovic, Naomi Osaka’s foot in the door, plus a whole lot more!
Let’s tennis!
Four Points
🎾 A bizarre night of tennis: Day Four at the Australian Open logged some of the strangest scorelines in recent tennis history. The results included the following... Jakub Mensik pulled off a (perhaps unsurprising) upset over world #6 Casper Ruud. World #5 Qinwen Zheng lost to Germany’s barely-in-the-top-100 Laura Siegemund. The 27th seed, Jordan Thompson of Australia, went down in straight sets to Nuno Borges. Olga Danilovic lost only three games in beating 25th seed Liudmila Samsonova. Aleksandar Vukic beat 22nd seed Sebastian Korda. And, in the late-night match, Alejandro Davidovich Fokina took nearly five hours to beat 29th seed Felix Auger-Aliassime.
🎾 A devastating loss: As we suspected, the Jack Draper vs. Thanasi Kokkinakis match was a five-set thriller. But when Draper took the final set 6-3, Kokkinakis couldn’t recall what his opponent said to him at the net: “I was seething. I had steam coming out of my ears. Nothing against him, I just knew my future was looking bleak.”
🎾 When you haven’t changed out of your cranky pants: For a man who has won the Australian Open title a whopping 10 times, Novak Djokovic has been incredibly irritable in his first two matches. Against Nishesh Basavareddy and Jaime Faria, both of whom are outside the world’s top 100, Djokovic was noticeably annoyed, exasperated, and even angry. Was it a matter of facing unknowns nearly half his age? Or maybe early round jitters after not winning a major last year? We’ll see in the next round when he faces Tomas Machac.
🎾 Australian Open reaches out to even a younger generation: If you’ve checked out the AO YouTube channel for live tennis, you may have noticed a ‘live’ option that features animated players with unusually large heads and a super-sized tennis ball on a virtual court that mimics the actual live play on the court. The point? Tennis Australia says it’s to “captivate a new generation of tennis fans, making the sport more accessible and engaging, particularly for kids and families.”
And, that’s game.
What They Said
I told myself, ‘Okay, you’re kind of on your way out, but you’re going to try to put your foot in the door,’...I told myself to just swing, because that’s my game. I can’t be hesitant and allow her to push me around the court. I also tried to think that way with my serve, as well.
-Naomi Osaka on how she turned things around against Karolina Muchova after dropping the first set 6-1.
