1. Many happy returns for Grand Slam specialist Martic
That’s how you celebrate your 27th birthday: by going further than ever before at a Grand Slam. Petra Martic is into the second week of a major for the first time after surviving a spirited battle with Thai qualifier Luksika Kumkhum on Rod Laver Arena to set up a fourth-round showdown with Elise Mertens for a place in the quarterfinals – and given her Grand Slam prowess in the past year, who would bet against her?
You see, Martic is emerging as something of a Grand Slam specialist. The Croatian is currently contesting her fourth major since a career-threatening back injury kept her out of the game for 10 months, and it’s fair to say things have gone well on the sport’s grandest stages. Martic has a 9-3 win-loss record at the majors since her return – 15-3 if you include her qualifying runs at Roland Garros and Wimbledon – and she has reached the fourth round on three occasions, only missing out on a main-draw win at the US Open.
Elsewhere, however, it is a very different story. Primarily operating on the lower-tier ITF circuit, Martic is 2-3 at tour-level away from the slams. Is it clever scheduling, helping to manage her recovery? Does it make her an unknown entity when she arrives at the majors? Or is it simply the luck of the draw? Whatever the case, it all makes for a very happy birthday for the world No.81 – and so say all of us:
2. It’s more than a game…
It’s not often you see a set decided in the second game – nor, for that matter, to play a game with more than enough points to settle six. Yet so it proved for Kyle Edmund, who found himself trailing Georgia’s Nikoloz Basilashvili by two sets to one in the early exchanges of the fourth, holding before switching ends and waiting to receive.
Then this happened:
Not only did the Briton claim the break after the mammoth 20-minute game (technically 19mins 59secs, but who’s counting?) but with the temperatures around Melbourne Park edging towards 40°C, the serving effort seemed to leave Basilashvili spent for the rest of the set as Edmund racked up a bagel, and later the victory.
“Probably the longest game of my career, to be honest,” Edmund said afterwards. “I mean, sets get played as quick as that. That game actually worked out to be a very key game, because that game was a set from him.”
Throw in a medical time-out after just three games for a back problem, the three hours, 24 minutes spent out in the sweltering Victorian sun, and the nerveless 7-5 finish in the final set, and you have to admit: that was some display from GB’s last representative in the singles draws. And don’t just take our word for it…
3. If Gael Monfils is the answer, what is the question?
A little bit of serving history was made on Hisense Arena as Ivo Karlovic — who else? — became the first player to hit 50 or more aces in back-to-back matches in his second-round win over Yuchi Sugita and third-round defeat by Andreas Seppi.
Already the oldest man to reach the AO third round in 40 years, the Croatian — one month shy of his 39th birthday — was bidding to become the oldest to reach the second week at a major since Jimmy Connors at the 1991 US Open. Alas it was not to be, Seppi succeeding where Sugita failed and breaking serve after the fifth set entered extra innings.
Still, how about them serve stats? Karlovic’s predilection for pummelling aces puts him head and shoulders above his peers — a situation which, at 211cm, he is all too familiar with. He has now hit 12,428 untouchable deliveries in his career, over 2,000 more than Roger Federer in second place, and was already the only man to hit 40+ aces in three consecutive Grand Slam matches during his Wimbledon run in 2015.
In fact, Karlovic has hit at least one ace in every single match of his ATP career — except one. The blank came at the Monte-Carlo Masters in 2008, but can you name the opponent?
4. What does a tennis lesson cost these days?
It was a bittersweet day for Ukrainian tennis fans. Kateryna Bondarenko’s run may have ended at the hands of No.19 seed Magdalena Rybarikova 7-5 3-6 6-1 on MCA, but earlier on Rod Laver Arena the present star of the nation’s tennis elite met the future.
Marta Kostyuk, the 15-year-old sensation who returned as the reigning AO junior champion and leaves having reached the third round on her Grand Slam debut, fell 6-2 6-2 to compatriot and No.4 seed Elina Svitolina. It was a professional performance from the 23-year-old, who treated it like any other match – there’s a Grand Slam title on the line, after all – as the heat, the sun, the five matches prior and the pressure of performing on such a grand stage finally took its toll on the teen.
Was she disappointed? Sure – what athlete isn’t after a defeat. But Kostyuk had a positive spin on the match that perhaps only a youngster might grasp: “How much you have to pay Svitolina to have one-hour lesson?” she asked the assembled press. “I got it for free.”
That’s certainly one way of looking at it – though Svitolina, tongue firmly in cheek, had another: “It was expensive, because we play for prize money.”
5. Kyrgios shows focus in front of Fresh Prince
It’s not often you claim a match win with three tiebreaks (unless your name is Ivo Karlovic, but enough about him). Nick Kyrgios had done so just once before in his career, ousting Radek Stepanek on his Grand Slam main draw debut at Roland Garros in 2013, 7-6(4) 7-6(8) 7-6(11).
Tonight the Australian No.1 not only had to be at his blistering best against his childhood idol Jo Wilfried Tsonga – he had to, in his own words after winning the Brisbane International in the build-up to AO 2018, keep an even keel. With a raucous Rod Laver Arena crowd living and dying with every point, that’s no mean feat; fortunately, the 24-year-old had the perfect talisman sat in the front row.
Will Smith, the erstwhile Fresh Prince of Bel Air and star of such movies as I Am Legend, Independence Day and Ali, was on hand to witness Kyrgios’s 7-6(5) 4-6 7-6(6) 7-6(5) third-round win, and the No.17 seed had a special shout-out for the American after the match.
“I've got Focus on my phone, I watch it every time I've got a flight,” Kyrgios said, referring to Smith’s 2015 crime comedy-drama – though he did add: “That's because of Margot Robbie though, not you.”
Because she’s a fellow Australian, right? Smith laughed, as did the crowd – the perfect end to a perfect night for the home hope.
