Oh so close from our own Thanasi Kokkankis who wasn’t bad off the back of a brilliant start via the tiebreak including a third set reprieve and a near finish opportunity where he was only a game away at one stage during the fourth.
It’s a shame he just couldn’t hold off through to the finish line unfortunately having been thrown out at the hands of Briton Jack Draper following a long, gruelling five-set contest last night at John Cain Arena. The final score was 6-7 with 3-7 tiebreak, 6-3, 3-6, 7-5 and 6-3 as the Kokk’s time at Melbourne Park isn’t over just yet when he will team up with Nick Kyrgios as his other “Special K’s” duo when the men’s doubles begins today.
If Kokkanikis have won it over Draper, then this could’ve been an all-Aussie third round match against Aleksandar Vukic going into tomorrow. But Vukic can be the one to shock yet another top-seeder in his watch like he did yesterday afternoon against 22nd seed American & 2023 AO Quarter-Finalist Sebastian Korda also following another long five-set stunner of his own (6-4, 3-6, 2-6, 6-3 and 7-5).
Although you can tell Jack has been our nemesis for a quite a while now having defeated a couple of Aussies along the way.
He first broke the hearts of Alex De Minaur a few months ago at the US Open Quarter-Final before he was eliminated in the semi by eventual champion Jannik Sinner. Then as said above, he managed to stop Kokkinakis in his tracks from also being very nearly shockingly eliminated to finishing off as triumphant to keep his AO campaign alive – fair play to him for that.
Now it looks like he’s leading this Ashes series of Tennis 2-0 over the best of five – we’re just making this up since Australia and England have a great sporting rivalry together for a very long time.
Who could be the man to stop him and not let Jack collect this Ashes urn? Well, Vukic could be the one to solve this.
And yes, shoutout to John McEnroe who does know his cricket well thanks to the love of cricket bats. His favourite cricket player is not far from the US down south from the Caribbean in West Indies player Sir Vivian Richards – good on ya John!!
Elsewhere, we only have Destanee Aiava in this women’s singles draw and she will have to dig deep this afternoon against 2022 AO runner-up Danielle Collins (USA).
This comes after Talia Gibson was blown away big time by Paula Badosa also last night (6-1, 6-0) while Ajla Tomjlanovic had some good moments too against 12th seed Diana Dhnaider but just not quite enough unfortunately at the end (6-7, 4-5) & also not the same player really since her Wimbledon QF breakthrough back in 2022 thanks to her knee troubles.
Other than that, there’s always Alex De Minaur’s fiance Katie Boulter even though she’s British. She will be back in action later today v Veronika Kudermetova & so does Alex who will be getting another chance to rock up Rod Laver Arena – his next opponent will be American Taylor Boyer & he will start not long after lunch.