‘I’m still around’: Agitated Djokovic’s AO quest continues; Sinner sweats it out but marches on
Updated ,first published
An agitated Novak Djokovic’s quest for a record-extending 11th Australian Open title remains alive after a rollercoaster – but still straight-sets – victory to advance to the fourth round.
It is the 70th time in Djokovic’s peerless career that he has made this stage of a major, while his 6-3, 6-4, 7-6 (7-4) dismissal of Botic van de Zandschulp on Rod Laver Arena saw him equal Roger Federer’s record of 102 match wins at Melbourne Park.
The 38-year-old tennis legend also became the first player to win 400 grand slam matches overall – but his latest win was not without drama, including an injury scare when he rolled his right ankle awkwardly.
There was also a close call for Djokovic when he angrily swatted away a ball during the second set that almost hit a ballkid kneeling at the net. He was infamously defaulted for a similar incident in his fourth-round match at the 2020 US Open when he unintentionally hit a lines judge in the throat with a ball.
“I apologised for that. That was not necessary, and in the heat of the moment,” Djokovic said post-match. “I was lucky there, and I’m sorry for causing any distress to the ballkid, or anybody.”
Djokovic sought treatment shortly after his ankle scare, where he fell to the court, but it ended up being for a blister on the bottom of the same foot, and he reported afterwards that he felt “really good”.
“I’m not getting ahead of myself because last year, I got too excited, too early in some of the grand slams when I was playing really well and getting to the quarters and semis, and then getting injured pretty much three out of the four,” he said.
“I’m still trying to give these young guys the push [to let them know] I’m still around, and I’m hanging in there.
“Obviously, [Carlos] Alcaraz and [Jannik] Sinner are the two best players in the world. They’re playing on a different level from all of us right now. But when you enter the court, and the ball rolls, you always have a chance, and particularly, here on this court.”
The 24-time grand slam champion was cruising at a set and double break up – continuing his strong start to this year’s event – when van de Zandschulp took a medical timeout to receive treatment for a right shoulder issue.
The Dutchman immediately snatched back a break after resuming and played his best tennis from there, including earning two set points on Djokovic’s serve in the 12th game of the third set, neither of which he could convert before losing the tiebreak and the contest.
On one of them, Djokovic unleashed a 193km/h second serve and played hyper-aggressively, finishing the point with a big forehand winner deep in the court.
“It was a pretty good treatment, I must say – it gave him a lot of a lot of firepower,” he said of van de Zandschulp.
“He was serving extremely well from that moment onwards. At the beginning of the second, he did struggle with the arm and I could see his kilometres per hour went down a little bit ... but then the tables turned, and I must say that I relaxed a little bit too much and was in trouble to close out the second set.
“Pretty much from that moment onwards, it was anybody’s game, so I’m just glad to overcome it in straight sets.”
Djokovic also aired his frustration at chair umpire John Blom late in the second set for not being strong enough with his warning to the crowd about yelling during points.
Blom announced he was asking “politely” for the fans to not distract the players, which triggered Djokovic to walk towards him and say: “After two-and-a-half hours, you can’t be polite. You have to take a stand.” The crowd instantly and loudly booed Djokovic.
The negative reaction did not seem to bother Djokovic, who animatedly contorted his body and imitated blowing a ball that was going well out later in the same game.
However, he appeared to acknowledge afterwards in his on-court interview that he had lost control of his emotions, after Jim Courier asked him what advice he would give to a far younger version of himself.
Djokovic’s answer? “Calm down, you jerk.”
He continued: “It’s true. I’m too stressed on the court very often ... I would say patience is a big one. When we are younger, regardless of the area of life that we are involved in, I think we want everything here and now today.”
- Marc McGowan
Extreme heat, extreme luck: Sinner wilts but lives to fight another day
Suffering with what appeared to be a full-body cramp, Jannik Sinner had just gone down a break in the third set to a little-known American and was facing a stunning Australian Open exit – until the tournament’s extreme heat rules came to his rescue.
World No.2 Sinner, scheduled in the hottest part of the day while 10-time champion and No.4 seed Djokovic was allocated the cooler night session on Rod Laver Arena for his third-round match, had drawn Eliot Spizzirri in what appeared to be a regulation contest for the champion Italian.
But 12 months after Sinner wilted on court – in last year’s fourth round against Holger Rune – he again struggled in the stifling conditions as the temperature rose into the high 30s. He dropped the opening set against the world No.85 as the full-body cramping slowly but surely took a greater toll.
Sinner recovered enough to stage a great escape, winning 4-6, 6-3, 6-4, 6-4, after the heat rules altered the complexion of the match.
The two-time Australian Open defending champion admitted he “got lucky” in the circumstances, conceding he needs to look into his physical preparation for coping with blanketing heat.
“I struggled physically a bit today – we saw this. I got lucky with the heat rule,” Sinner said on court.
“They closed the roof. I took my time, and as the time passed I felt better and better.
“I was cramping a bit all over ... this is an area where I need to improve. I just tried to stay as calm as possible, but at the end of the day tennis is a very mental game.”
Later, in his post-match media conference, Sinner was pressed further about his “luck” after also dodging a bullet against Rune last year when, in distressing scenes, he battled in the heat, trembling and shaking, even though the temperature was noticeably lower.
“I try to stay calm even in a moment like this,” Sinner said about the events on Saturday. “If he keeps playing the way he was playing, maybe I was dropping a little bit, maybe my tournament was over today. I don’t know.”
His lower-ranked opponent was more magnanimous.
“I don’t know if he [Sinner] got saved by it,” said Spizzirri.
“I smiled a little bit when the heat rule went into effect, just because it was kind of funny timing as I went up 3-1, but at the same time, you know, the game at 2-1 in the third set was when the heat, when it hit, I think it’s 5.0 [on the tournament’s heat stress scale], which means that the heat rule is in effect.
“It was just funny that right when I broke, and he was wobbling, that it happened to happen that way.
“But at the same time, that’s the rules of the game, and you’ve got to live with it.”
Regardless, when Sinner was “wobbling”, his team knew the danger of the moment. His Australian coach, Darren Cahill, took advantage of the proximity of the on-court coaching pods to say: “You just need to get through the third set mate, even if you just walk around, don’t worry.”
With Sinner cramping even more, reeling from a 20-point rally in a game in which the Italian dropped serve to fall behind 1-3, chair umpire Fergus Murphy announced that the tournament was implementing the last stage of its heat policy: suspending play on outside courts and closing the roof on the stadium courts.
The timing could not have been any better for Sinner, and any worse for Spizzirri.
In TV commentary, Australian great Todd Woodbridge said Sinner could “thank his lucky stars”.
“Who knows what might have happened if play in that third set had continued for another 10-15 minutes,” said Woodbridge on Nine, owner of this masthead.
“He can thank his lucky stars the heat kept climbing, and he had that opportunity to get off court and receive that bit of treatment, get that fluid, the pickle juice in the fight off those cramps.”
Later, however, Sinner was not as desperate to find an answer to questions about conditioning.
“I feel like, you know, sometimes there are... no real explanations,” he said. “There is sometimes, for example, this night, I didn’t sleep ... the way I wanted to.
“The quality of sleep was not perfect. Maybe it was this, maybe not. I tried to be in the best-possible shape every, every day recovery, everything going in the right direction.
“I know my body a little bit better now, and I hope that it goes slowly away, which, you know that was the case today with the rules.”
Sinner confirmed that during the break while the roof was closed, which lasted about 15 minutes, he wasn’t able to receive treatment off court. Instead, he took a few minutes to lie down.
“I was alone – there was no treatment,” he said. “You cannot have treatment in that time. So I was, you know, stretching.
“I laid down for five minutes and [was] trying to loosen up the muscles. And it worked really well... Trying to get, you know, the body temperature a bit more down, and that’s it – time passed quite, quite fast.”
- Scott Spits
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Marc McGowan is a sports reporter for The AgeConnect via X.
Scott Spits is a sports reporter for The AgeConnect via X or email.