Jordan Thompson and Aleks Vukic won epic five-set battles on Wimbledon’s opening day, while Daria Saville cruised through, but it was not all good news for Australian tennis.
Australian Jordan Thompson came from two sets to love down to win his opening match at Wimbledon.Daria Saville and Aleks Vukic were other Australians to win first round matches on Monday.An exasperated Jordan Thompson could only stare and offer an agonised smirk to his coach Marinko Matosevic, as he did many times on Wimbledon’s opening day.
He was one of three Australians to win on the opening day at Wimbledon, advancing to the second round alongside Daria Saville and Aleks Vukic, while Max Purcell and Alex Bolt lost their first round matches.Thompson’s stirring comeback looked a bit dicey towards the end when he gave back one of his two breaks, but he hung on, with Matosevic urging him on from one side of the court and Davis Cup captain Lleyton Hewitt on the other.
Just as importantly, the back issue that bothered him in his semi-final defeat at Queen’s Club was not a problem.There was also some animated dialogue at the end of the third set between Thompson and the chair umpire about how long Kotov was taking between points, but that only spurred him on rather than serving as a distraction.
Saville, who had not won at Wimbledon since reaching the last 32 six years ago, blitzed American Peyton Stearns 6-4, 6-2, while Vukic dramatically rallied from down a break twice in the fifth set – and saved a match point in the 10th game – to oust Austria’s Sebastian Ofner 6-7 , 6-4, 6-4, 3-6, 7-6 .“I’m pretty happy with how I played, and more so how I handled it,” Saville said.
Thompson won a five-set battle against Vukic at this year’s Australian Open, and has come out on top in four of his past five matches that went the distance. It is six from nine if you go back even further.It was not always that way: Thompson won only two of his first 10 five-setters. However, one of those victories – at the 2017 Australian Open against Portugal’s Joao Sousa – proved crucial to unlocking the belief that helped him realise his five-set potential.
“It gave me so much confidence to know that I can come back from any deficit. Obviously, you need to play well still but just to know that the fitness is taken care of is a big win.”
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