Thanasi Kokkinakis didn't enjoy his stay on the clay this year but the Australian is back to winning ways on his preferred hard court events.
Kokkinakis is in North America early, taking part in the ATP Granby Challenger in order to better prepare for the upcoming stretch of events. After finally returning to regular competition last year the Australian continued playing solid tennis this year though he's been far from his best away from the hard courts, as he even announced that he would need to ‘surgically address’ a problem after the Roland Garros.
Opting against a prolongued summer vacation, Kokkinakis, who recently admitted how adicting the winning is, travelled to Granby, Canada to take part in the challenger event and he faced Patrick Kypson of the United States in the first round. It was a solid match from the Australian who jumped out to an early lead and cruised to a 6-2 finish against his less-experienced opponent.
Kokkinakis had the game firing on all cylinders as he dropped only a handful of points on his serve while doing quite a bit of damage on the serve of his opponent. The second set was a bit more complicated as Kypson settled in nicely and played a nice set.
Both players were broken in the second set as Kokkinakis struggled with his second serve particularly. He couldn't do much behind it as Kypson was quite aggressive. Had he played better on his second serve he would have likely avoided getting broken.
In any case the match was very close in the final stages of the second set as we saw the players unable to settle it before a tiebreak. In the tiebreak, it was a rather competitive affair. Kokkinakis pulled ahead to 6-4 and had two match points.
However, that wasn’t enough as his opponent staged a strong comeback in the tie-break, winning it 8-6 and forcing the match into a decider. Only after a couple of points played in the third set, the play was suspended due to rain, and players had to wait.
Once they returned to the court, Kokkinakis couldn’t find his A-game and he was broken by Kypson, soon facing 2-4 deficit and a couple of break points from the American. But the Australian was determined to fighr, and he did.
Starting an incredible comeback, Kokkinakis was able to win four consecutive games and win the match 6-2, 6-7(6), 6-4 to set up a second-round clash with Kent James Trotter.
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