👋 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.
Watch This!
🔥 Matteo Berrettini vs. Holger Rune (2nd round — Australian Open): This should be a banger of a match, figuratively and literally. Expect Berretini to control points by serving out wide on both sides and then camping out in the backhand corner to rip forehands. But also expect Rune to counteract that with precise, powerful backhands down the line. This match will likely come down to serves and returns for both players. Everything else — groundstrokes, points at the net, etc. — will likely be a wash. Both are hungry. Only one gets out alive.
- The record: Holger Rune leads this head-to-head 3-1 over Matteo Berrettini. The Italian’s only win is from three years ago at Indian Wells. Last year, Rune beat Berrettini twice, both on outdoor hard courts and both three-set battles.
- On the line: Both of these players are looking for the same thing: to reestablish themselves to their former status at the top of the game. Berrettini had an impressive 2024 as he came back from injury, landing in the final or winning the title at multiple 250 events. Rune struggled to maintain his level of play in 2024 after an outstanding 2023 that gave him a career-high ranking of number four in the world.
Keeping an Eye on...
- Rebecca Sramkova vs. Iga Swiatek (2nd round — Australian Open)
- Learner Tien vs. Daniil Medvedev (2nd round — Australian Open)
- Tristan Boyer vs. Alex de Minaur (2nd round — Australian Open)
- Emma Raducanu vs. Amanda Anisimova (2nd round — Australian Open)
- Elena Rybakina vs. Iva Jovic (2nd round — Australian Open)
- Destanee Aiava vs. Danielle Collins (2nd round — Australian Open)
- Joao Fonseca vs. Lorenzo Sonego (2nd round — Australian Open)
- Denis Shapovalov vs. Lorenzo Musetti (2nd round — Australian Open)
- Caroline Dolehide vs. Elina Svitolina (2nd round — Australian Open)
- Hubert Hurkacz vs. Miomir Kecmanovic (2nd round — Australian Open)
Learn how to watch today’s action over at Tennis Watchers.
Read, Watch, Listen
- Novak Djokovic makes his way past another youthful first-timer.
- Has Carlos Alcaraz become a servebot?
- Laura Siegemund took out world #5 Qinwen Zheng, and it was one wild ride. But she had a game plan that she believes she executed quite precisely: “It’s never going to be easy, and there will be continuously through the match, like, tough situations to solve. But I wanted to come out, you know, courageous. I wanted to show the variety of my game, be very aggressive, and that’s what I did.”
- The Guardian’s Full Story podcast tells the story of Hady Habib, the first Lebanese player to make the main draw of a major (and a first-round win to boot). And Tumaini Carayol wrote the story.
- Be sure to read (and subscribe to!) Hugh Clarke’s A Thread of Order. He’s on the ground in Melbourne Park and offered up some poignant thoughts on changes at the tournament and some early round player performances.
- The Australian Open has made available on its YouTube channel the entire documentary, John McEnroe: The Racket. With archival footage and recent interviews — including with McEnroe, himself — it tells the story of the American’s default at the 1990 Australian Open.
