Laura Robson 'proud' to be back on court after injuries
After practising for the first time since having hip surgery a year ago, Laura Robson says she feared she would never “make it back on court”.
After practising for the first time since having hip surgery a year ago, Laura Robson says she feared she would never “make it back on court”.
On Monday, ATPTour.com began its Season in Review series by revealing the fifth through third-best Grand Slam matches of 2020. We continue the series by looking at the two best major clashes of the year. Later this week we’ll also look at the biggest comebacks and upsets at the Slams this year before turning our attention next week to the best matches, comebacks and upsets at ATP Tour tournaments.
Video courtesy Tennis Australia
2) Nick Kyrgios d. Karen Khachanov, Australian Open, R3, 25 January 2020 (Read Report)
Nick Kyrgios started the 2020 season with a clean slate, characterising himself as a “new and improved” Nick. Already a fan favourite Down Under, he became a legend by spearheading relief efforts to combat the awful bushfires that devastated Australia in the lead up to the tournament. Even before he entered Melbourne Arena for his clash against Karen Khachanov—then ranked nine spots above him at No. 17 in the FedEx ATP Rankings—the well-lubricated evening crowd was ready for a party, singing Sweet Caroline in unison. Little did they know that they should have been pacing themselves, as they were in a four tie-break, four-hour, 26-minute clash for the ages.
It all started innocently enough, if a Kyrgios match can ever be labelled as such, with Nick taking the first two sets 6-2, 7-6(5). The combustible Aussie, dressed in a fluorescent kit and on his best behaviour, raced out to a 4-2 lead in the third set, and it appeared as though he was off to the races for a highly anticipated fourth-round showdown with Rafael Nadal. But the Russian masher, as it turned out, was just getting warmed up. He broke back at love in the seventh game, then fended off a match point in the third-set tie-break before sending the match to a fourth set.
The Russian saved another match point in the fourth-set tie-break at 6/7, and he sent the match into a fifth set three points later as a Kyrgios backhand sailed just wide. Of course, the match went to yet another tie-break (this time a first-to-10 Match Tie-Break), and Nick converted his third match point, more than two hours after his first.
The crowd had seemingly willed the gutted Kyrgios to victory and when Khachanov’s final backhand sailed wide, they went ballistic as the Canberra native dropped his racquet, fell to the ground and then laid flat on his back for a spell before staggering to his feet to celebrate the win. It may have been a “new and improved” Nick, but in many ways, it was vintage King Kyrgios stuff on the court—under-arm, and fake under-arm serves, drop shots aplenty, and dozens of impossible winners.
“It’s emotional,” Kyrgios said after his 6-2, 7-6(5), 6-7(6), 6-7(7), 7-6(8) win. “That’s definitely one of my best wins of my career, I think…This is just epic man, I don’t even know what’s going on. Honestly my legs feel about 40kg each. I was losing it mentally a little bit… I thought I was going to lose, honestly.”
Video courtesy Tennis Australia
1) Novak Djokovic d. Dominic Thiem, Australian Open, Final,
Credit Dominic Thiem for taking on the toughest jobs in tennis. In 2018 and 2019, he tangled with Rafael Nadal, the toughest hombre in the world on clay, in the final at Roland Garros. And earlier this year, on a clear night under an open roof, he took on Novak Djokovic in the final of the Australian Open. Nole, then a seven-time champion at the event, had never lost a semi-final or final at the Grand Slam of Asia-Pacific.
At the time, Thiem had never beaten Djokovic on a hard court, and, to make matters worse, the Serb had a big extra incentive to win: an eighth title would allow him to overtake Rafael Nadal as the No. 1 player in the FedEx ATP Rankings. Thiem may have been taking on the toughest tests in tennis, but prior to 2019 he wasn’t exactly acing those exams. The Austrian standout was just 7-15 versus the Big Three prior to 2019, and although he led the ATP Tour with 211 wins from 2016-9, before 2019 he was 15-32 against the Top 10.
But in the year leading up to the Aussie Open final, Thiem was starting to turn the tide. In 2019, he won two of his three matches against Djokovic, including a big win in the semi-final at Roland Garros in five sets. He was 3-0 versus Federer that year and he split a pair of meetings with Rafael Nadal. And so, Djokovic came into the match as the favourite, but Thiem was clearly inching closer toward the Serb’s throne.
Thiem knew he wouldn’t beat Djokovic playing it safe, so he came out of the gates going for winners and the game plan seemed to be working as he raced out to a two-sets-to-one lead.
Djokovic would later admit that he started to “feel really bad on the court” after losing the second set due to dehydration. He was frustrated with both his opponent and the chair umpire, who cited him for consecutive time violations in the second set. At 1-1 in the fourth set, Thiem had a break point that could have given him a stranglehold on the match. But Djokovic surprised him with a crisp serve-and-volley combo winner to stave off the threat.
“Probably one point and one shot separated us tonight,” Djokovic said of the point. “(It) could have gone a different way… I kind of regained my energy and strength midway in the fourth set and got back into the match. I was on the brink of losing the match.”
Thiem didn’t have another break point in the fourth set, which he dropped 6-3, and then the Serb took command in the fifth, breaking Thiem in the third game and then closing out a scintillating 6-4, 4-6, 2-6, 6-3, 6-4 win in three hours and 59 minutes.
“I think there’s not much to change,” Thiem said after the match. “In the last two sets, I definitely gave everything I had. Novak is part of three guys who are by far the best players ever who played tennis. If you play a Grand Slam final against him, it’s always going to be a match where very small details are deciding.”
Thiem lost the battle but the confidence he gained in pushing the World No. 1 to the limit in Australia may have helped him later in the season, as he captured his first major in New York and later exacted a small measure of revenge on the Serb, beating him in the semi-finals of the Nitto ATP Finals.
Read More: Best Grand Slam Matches Of 2020 Part 1
ATPTour.com today kicks off our annual season in review series, beginning with Part 1 of our look at the best Grand Slam matches of the year. This week we’ll also look at the biggest upsets and comebacks at the Slams in 2020. Next week, we’ll look at the best matches, comebacks and upsets at ATP Tour events.
In A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens wrote, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” Tennis fans and players also went through seasons of darkness and light, hope and despair, all within one challenging and unpredictable roller coaster of a year.
Though in the tennis world, the period of despair occurred in the spring and early summer, when it was unclear if the season could move forward at all. Tennis’ spring of hope came a few months late, as the US Open and Roland Garros moved forward, giving the world a much needed diversion in the form of a full month combined of wonderful tennis.
The year got off to a cracking start Down Under at the Australian Open, where the players raised much-needed funds for bushfire relief efforts and the men played dozens of great matches, including 29 five-setters. The cancellation of Wimbledon was a gut punch, but the fact that US Open and Roland Garros came off smoothly and featured so many excellent matches was beyond great.
It was a year of milestones at the majors—Novak Djokovic took his eighth Australian Open, Dominic Thiem won his first major, and Rafael Nadal won his 13th title at Roland Garros. But there were many other great moments too. Here we recount some of the year’s best matches at the majors, including some you no doubt saw, and others, like a six-hour epic at Roland Garros, you may have missed.
In Part 1 below, we look at the fifth, fourth and third best Slam matches of 2020, followed tomorrow by a look at what we deem to be the best two Slam matches of the season.
5) Lorenzo Giustino d. Corentin Moutet, Roland Garros, R1, 28 September 2020 (Read Report)
Lorenzo Giustino, a 29-year-old from Naples, Italy, has just one tour-level win in his career. But oh what a win it was. Coming into his first-round match against the 21-year-old Frenchman, Corentin Moutet, then ranked No. 71, he had entered the qualies of 16 majors and had lost in the qualifying rounds 16 times. But his luck seemed to be changing. In his previous major, the Australian Open, he made the main draw as a lucky loser, though he lost in the first round.
Still, there was no reason to believe he would beat Moutet, a promising young French talent in Paris, particularly after Moutet bageled him in the first set. But Giustino battled back, winning the second and third sets in tie-breaks, before losing the fourth 6-2. By the start of the fifth set, the match had already been going on for three hours and five minutes, but little did either man know they still had a three-hour fifth set to play (Roland Garros is the only major where players must win by two in the fifth set).
Moutet, nicknamed ‘Colonel Moutet’ by Brad Gilbert, served for the match three times in the fifth, but was broken each time. Not that service breaks were a rarity in the match, mind you. Moutet was broken nine times, Giustino thirteen. Moutet also outscored his opponent by 242 points to 217, and blasted 31 more winners. But none of that mattered, as Giustino came up with gutsy, ingenious clay court tennis to prevail 0-6, 7-6(7), 7-6(3), 2-6, 18-16 in what was, at six hours and five minutes, the second-longest match in Roland Garros history, next to the six-hour, 33-minute contest between Fabrice Santoro and Arnaud Clement in 2004.
The Italian claimed that he felt fine after the match.
“No, no, no, I feel perfect,” he said, after a reporter asked if he’d be too tired to face Diego Schwartzman in the next round. “Tomorrow I’ll go run a bit because I think I’m too fresh.”
Sadly for the tenacious Giustino, now ranked No. 149, he lost to Schwartzman and is still looking for his second tour-level win. But he’ll always have Paris.
4) Borna Coric d. Stefanos Tsitsipas, US Open, R3, 4 September 2020
Borna Coric has a tattoo that says, “There is nothing worse than being ordinary”. Perhaps that ethos kept him from giving up while down two sets to one and 1-5 in the fourth set of his third round match against Stefanos Tsitispas at the US Open this year. Coric, then No. 32 in the FedEx ATP Rankings, knew he’d need to be extraordinary to upset the tournament’s fourth seed and indeed he was just that.
Though they’re both from Mediterranean countries, are close in age and have younger sisters they adore, the men are a study in contrasts: Coric wears his hair cut short and plays from the baseline; Tstsipas has the long curly locks and comes to net. The Croat burst into the Top 15 in 2018, but seemed to lose a step late in 2019 and into 2020. In his last major appearance prior to the Tsitsipas match, he lost in the first round at the Australian Open. And so, he was in need of a career-pivoting win against a player who, though two years younger, had overtaken him in the rankings.
Up two sets to one and 5-1 in the fourth, it seemed certain to be another disappointing tournament for Coric, until he held and broke back to narrow the gap. Tsitsipas’ game was slipping but he still had three match points at 5-4, 40-0. But he squandered each of them, and the then 23-year-old Croat stormed back, winning six consecutive games to take the fourth set 7-5.
Despite the fourth set collapse, Tsitsipas admirably recovered, playing well in the fifth set to send the match to a decisive tie-break. Stefanos hit just one double fault across 29 service games, but then served up two in the final tie-break. The hiccups gave Coric a 6/3 lead, which he cashed in on his second match point, giving him a remarkable 6-7(2), 6-4, 4-6, 7-5, 7-6(4) comeback win in four hours, and 36 riveting minutes that amounted to a Greek tragedy for Tsitsipas.
“I have to be honest and say that I was really lucky,” said Coric, who subsequently beat Jordan Thompson in the next round before falling to Alexander Zverev in the quarter-finals. “I made some unbelievable returns and I was a little bit lucky at the end. In the third and fourth set, he was playing unbelievable tennis and I felt like I had no chance. In the fifth-set tie-break, I knew it was not going to be easy for him, so I tried to just keep the ball in court and make him play as many balls as possible.”
For his part, the Greek kept his sense of humour and perspective after the loss. “This is probably the saddest and funniest thing at the same time that has ever happened in my career,” tweeted Tsitsipas.
The win would indeed be a season changer for Coric, who finished the season at No. 24 in the FedEx ATP Rankings largely on the strength of his quarter-final showing and a subsequent run to the final at the St. Petersburg Open, where he beat Reilly Opelka and Milos Raonic before falling to Andrey Rublev.
3) Roger Federer d. John Millman, Australian Open, R3, 24 January 2020 (Read Report)
John Millman is one of the hardest working, and nicest, players on the ATP Tour. But the 31-year-old Aussie has a career record that includes more losses than wins and he has never cracked the Top 30. Nothing about his career would suggest that he’d be Roger Federer’s kryptonite—even his career record (1-3) against the Swiss legend doesn’t adequately reveal the fits Millman has given Federer in recent years.
Millman, then ranked No. 55, notched a historic upset over Federer at the 2018 US Open in stifling heat, and played him close in two other losses, in Brisbane in 2015 and in Halle in 2019. But when they met again, earlier this year in the second round of the Australian Open, Federer still came into the match as a decisive favourite. Millman even referred to the possibility of him beating Federer again as “lightning striking twice”.
But when the tenacious, uber-fit Millman went up an early break against Federer in the fifth set, it looked as if the maestro from Münchenstein was indeed about to be struck down twice by the Aussie. The raucous crowd didn’t know whom to support—the Aussie underdog or the beloved champ, who oddly became a bit of an underdog in his own right. Federer fought back, levelling the fifth set at 2-2, but in the fifth-set tie-break (first to 10, win by two), Millman steamed out to 3/0 and 8/4 leads.
Video courtesy Tennis Australia
Federer kept his cool though, reeling off six straight points, punctuating a remarkable, 4-6, 7-6(2), 6-4, 4-6 7-6(8) win with a cross-court forehand winner into open space.
“Oh God, it was tough,” Federer said of his 100th Australian Open win after the match. “Thank God it was a Match Tie-break, otherwise I would have lost this one…A bit of luck maybe goes one way… I didn’t play too bad after all and I was getting ready to explain myself in the press conference… What a match and John deserves over half of this one.”
Two matches later, Federer would save seven match points against Tennys Sandgren in the quarter-finals, extending his streak of fifth-set Australian Open victories to six, dating back to 2017. (Hint: Look out for that match to appear in our list of best Slam comebacks later in the week.)
Coming Tuesday: The best two Grand Slam matches of 2020.
