Thanasi Kokkinakis lost the opening set of his Citi Open clash against Taro Daniel, but the Australian came back to win in three sets.
Kokkinakis has been in North America for a while now, having played at the Granby ATP Challenger event in Canada before making his way to the United States. He was in Atlanta as well, stunning Gael Monfils with a superb comeback, and now he's done the same thing to Taro Daniel.
The Australian isn't playing perfect tennis at the moment, but he's winning, and that's what ultimately counts. The first set wasn't very good as Daniel proved quite capable, taking it 6-2. The Japanese player has shown a lot of solid tennis on hard courts this year, so this wasn't that surprising.
Kokkinakis struggled with his serve and couldn't do much with his return. The second set saw that change as the Australian exerted much more pressure on his opponent this time around. He did most of the damage on his second serve, which allowed him to break Daniel twice in the set to take it. The final set was a very competitive one as both players pushed to win the match, his second at the ATP 500 level this year.
Daniel struggled with his serve, and that was a huge problem as he was broken immediately to start the set. Kokkinakis couldn't hold his serve either, so it was 1-1 after two games. The 7th game was a very crucial one, tightly contested, with Kokkinakis emerging with the 4-3 lead. He then had a really solid service game to confirm the lead, and that proved enough.
The final score was 2-6, 6-4, 6-4 for the Australian, who moves on to face Ugo Humbert in the next round. The hope is that he'll be able to win that match to avoid losing after a solid win like what happened in Atlanta against Alex de Minaur.
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