Aussie Bites: Chalk flew up!

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Nuts and Bolts

Day 4 Results | Day 5 Order of Play | Updated Draws

• The Upshot: It was a day of absolute chalk at Melbourne Park, where the seeds were nearly undefeated – 28th seed Emma Raducanu lost to Anastasia Potapova – and, for the most part, the higher ranked players won. Honestly, there wasn't that much to frazzle about. That's not a bad thing!
• Bracket Busters: If you had a third round between Aryna Sabalenka and Raducanu on your bracket, my condolences. The Brit looked frazzled and fatigued in the wind and lost pretty easily to Potapova 7-3(3), 6-2.
• Round 2 Seed Casualties do far: 1 - [28] Raducanu
• On tap for Day 5: A much more intriguing slate of matches compared to Day 4.
  • Men's: Stan Wawrinka vs. Arthur Gea, Karen Khachanov vs. Nishesh Basavareddy, Stefanos Tsitsipas vs. Tomas Machac, Denis Shapovalov vs. Marin Cilic, Botic van de Zandschulp vs. Shang Jungcheng, and a rare all-Lorenzo battle to open play on MCA.
  • Women's: Madison Keys vs. Ashlyn Krueger, Naomi Osaka vs. Sorana Cirstea, Jessica Pegula vs. McCartney Kessler, Iga Swiatek vs. Marie Bouzkova, Belinda Bencic vs. Nikola Bartunkova, Janice Tjen vs. Karolina Pliskova, and Jelena Ostapenko on the Party Court against Wang Xinyu.

Day 4 Highlights

• Jannik? Is that you? No. 1 Carlos Alcaraz overcame an early deficit against Yannik Hanfmann to win 7-6(4), 6-3, 6-2. He'll face Corentin Moutet, who advanced after Michael Zheng was forced to retire in the fourth set. The top dog on the women's side rolled too, as Aryna Sabalenka dropped four games to Bai Zhaoxuan. She gets Potapova next.
• Led by Coco Gauff and Mirra Andreeva, the youngsters in the top half are barreling through the draw. Coco dropped four games to Olga Danilovic, Mirra looked on her way to double-bageling Maria Sakkari before winning 6-0, 6-4, Vicky Mboko beat Caty McNally in straight sets, and Clara Tauson edged out Polina Kudermetova 7-5 in the third. Mboko and Tauson will face off in the next round, while Coco will take on Hailey Baptiste. Andreeva gets Elena-Gabriela Ruse.

• Also part of that youth movement: Zeynap Sonmez. The 23-year-old from Turkey made her first Australian Open third round by defeating Anna Bondar in front a packed crowd of Turkish supporters.

• More youth! 23rd seed Diana Shnaider, 21, saved match points to halt the home favorite. Aussie wildcard Talia Gibson had three match points in the second set to secure the biggest win of her career, but Shnaider fought them off to win 3-6, 7-5, 6-3. She'll face 12th seed Elina Svitolina, who needed 76 minutes to advance.
• The sole five-set match of the day was won by Alejandro Davidovich Fokina. He held off Reilly Opelka 6-3, 7-6(3), 5-7, 4-6, 6-4 and will play 19th seed Tommy Paul in the third round. Foki was very excited about the win:

• And here is why:

• Alexander Bublik put in a fantastic performance to beat Marton Fucsovics 7-5, 6-4, 7-5. This was a high-quality match, and Bublik was locked in. That's something to notice. He'll play Tomas Etcheverry next.
• Not a set dropped today for Andrey Rublev and Francisco Cerundolo, who will meet in Round 3.
• That's two....TWO Grand Slam victories for Daniil Medvedev this season, DOUBLING the number he had all of last season. Medvedev had us all a little worried there when he was trailing Quentin Halys by a set and a break. But he quickly righted the ship to win 7-6(9), 6-3, 6-4, 6-2. He gets Fabian Marozsan next.
• 25th seed Learner Tien is one Nuno Borges away from defending his points from last year. He beat Alexander Shevchenko in four sets to make Round 3.

• There was a wee little rain delay during the night session, but that didn't stop Karolina Muchova coming through a very high-quality match against an inspired Alycia Parks, winning 4-6, 6-4, 6-4. Muchova will play Magda Linette next. No. 7 seed Jasmine Paolini defeated Magdalena Frech and will play Iva Jovic.
• Rounding out the night were a pair of midnight finishes from Frances Tiafoe and Iva Jovic. Frances will prepare to take on all of Australia and Alex DeMinaur in a blockbuster third round.

Daily Reads

• Once again it pains me to say: I agree with Carole Bouchard. Let quirk reign! (Tennis Sweet Spot)

And it’s not even a question of going to what one might see as the extremes, because Oliynykova or the Niculescu and Fabrice Santoro of the past are their unique types of brands, but let’s praise the Ons Jabeur of it all. And let’s just remember the effect Grigor Dimitrov and Denis Shapovalov had last year on Jannik Sinner. I talked to many coaches after that, and they all said the same: Well, of course, he struggled, because nobody out there plays like this anymore. And I’m sorry, how in hell have we landed in a spot where Dimitrov and Shapovalov’s brand of tennis is an endangered species? What happened?

The debate about the uniformisation of surfaces has been going on for years, but what about the uniformisation of game styles? I’m not big on court speed unless it’s really been slowed down like hell for absolutely zero reason at the end of the year, so maybe I’m biased, but it seems to me that losing the variety of the game styles is a much bigger problem. Are both related? Surely one played a part in the other. But I’m not sure it’s the whole story.

• Speaking of letting quirk reign: Boris Becker has a Naomi Osaka take, and I'm not sure it's a very good one! (ESPN)
• I was going to write a long rebuttal, but even my rebuttal would be moot in the face of Naomi's perfect and succinct response to his precise premise last night:

• And while a lot of folks were up in arms thinking the walk-out get up was Nike's doing, Jessica Schiffer at Hard Courts reports that it was not. They just did the kit itself.

• Guys, come on, be serious. It was not Jessica Pegula's fault Sean McDermott was fired. (Yahoo)
• The game has changed and Marin Cilic has had a front seat to it all. (ATP)

It's interesting how the game changed and I think it came out of nowhere, without sort of any influence from anybody. I think it came as well because of the Covid time…. If you would go and speak to Top 100 or Top 200 players on the Tour, the average racquet weight is, let's say, 305, 310 grams. And that was just impossible to see during the 2000s or 2010s in the past 10 or 20 years. Most of the guys were playing with the racquets which were 330, 340, 345 grams.

My own racquet, I would say is one of the heaviest on the Tour. And so this changed and the game then changed into power and speed. Everyone is athletically incredible. Everyone can hit the ball big, but it shifted a little bit of the game into this direction of ‘Who's going to hit bigger and harder? Who's going to be athletically incredible?’ And then it took away a little bit of the intricacies of the game, playing cat and mouse, just different styles of the game, which we had in these past 15 to 20 years.

• The ATP caught up with Mario Ancic (!!!), who has been keeping tabs on fellow Columbian Michael Zheng (ATP)

The Croatian remains based in New York as a Principal at the private equity company One Equity Partners. The 41-year-old follows the Columbia tennis team closely and over the years and has gotten to know its players, including Zheng.

“I think it's exceptional what he's doing, and he's a very humble person, very humble kid,” Ancic told ATPTour.com. “What all these guys are doing: Going to classes — very intense — competing amongst the best and the brightest in the country and internationally, and then still committing to being part of the programme that's Top 10 in the country is nothing short of inspirational.”

• As Elina Svitolina has learned, sometimes less is more. Interesting, though not surprising to hear how devastating that BJK Cup loss was. (Tennis.com)
• Journalists took up Oleksandra Oliynykova's offer to speak more freely about the war in Ukraine outside of the interview room. (The Athletic via Yahoo)

• Here's the BBC's post-mortem on Emma Raducanu's second-round exit. It sounds like she's still unclear how she wants to play her tennis, which is further exacerbated by not being fully fit during the pre-season. (BBC)

"I want to be playing a different way. The misalignment with how I'm playing right now and how I want to be playing is something I want to work on," Raducanu said.

"There are definitely pockets of me playing how I want to play, and it comes out in flashes, which is a positive. But it's not how I want to be consistently.

"It's not going to fall into place straight away, but the more I work on how I want to be playing, it will be more of my identity every time I step onto the court."

• Simon Briggs has more details here and wonders if Francisco Roig's days might be numbered. (The Telegraph via Yahoo)

• Raducanu's quotes reminded me of this press conference she gave at Cincinnati in 2022:

"I think I do each of the aspects pretty well, separated. But I just need to put them together. For example, some weeks I have served really, really well. I think over the clay in the beginning I served really well. Then like some weeks, I don't know, it would just disappear and then I will become more of a defensive player. Then I will become more of an attacking player. 

"So I think I am still trying to find the balance and just trying to package my game together more so. But like I said, every match at this level I figure out what works, what doesn't work, how I should be hitting the ball. I feel more confident in what I'm doing now."

• Damn, Jannik, ok:

• Damn, Yannik, ok. (ATP)
• It's official: being a tennis fan is bad for your health. (NY Times)
• David Kane caught up with one of my favorites interviewees, Karolina Pliskova. She was built to be a podcaster. She is immune to your smoke. (Tennis.com)

“Marketa [Vondrousova] was upset because I said something about how I don’t like when someone retires,” she told me. “If someone withdraws, that’s fine because maybe you’re injured, but if you’re retiring and if it looks to me like you could finish the match, that’s different. There are many people who, to me, retire from matches because they don’t want to lose and finish the match. For me, it’s a loss regardless, no matter the score. Maybe if you were up when you retire, and that’s when you see when something is really happening. But some of the injuries, I think most people can at least finish the matches.

“Look, the way I am, sometimes I say things which not everyone agrees. But that’s why people do podcasts, right? It’s all to express different opinions. Not everyone likes it. That’s fine with me.”

• Ben Shelton says college players are dogs (complimentary):

• Midnight Snack update: So indeed, the Trader Joe's Chili and Lime Rolled Tortilla Chips from yesterday do taste better as a dipping chip. Rocked it with some Bitchin' Sauce Cilantro Chili and that got me through the rain delays.
• H/t Discord Roberto: This is an incredible edit of last year's Grand Slam champions:

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A post shared by Anton Alfy (@antonalfy)

• Not gonna lie, when I realized I had to pay an extra $30 to be able to watch the Australian Open in full this year, I nearly peaced out. You're saying I have to pay extra because I want to watch Muchova-Parks instead of whatever RLA/JCA is playing on the main channel? The greed is truly audacious and a scam. (Awful Announcing)
• H/t to Discord Iga for this gem of a find:

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A post shared by Bobby Finn (@itsbobbyfinn)

• They're really saying this is the Oscar villain this year:

• Northern Lion is, as usual, correct: all you kids complaining about sex in movies need to grow up.

• Bop of the Day: Would the kids be too scared to say this band's name out loud? Scandalous!

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