Among those featured in the series, which follows a player’s career in each episode, are 10 tennis stars. They are Kasper Ruud, Taylor Fritz, Maria Sakkari, Matteo Berrettini, Paula Badosa, Nick Kyrgios, Tanasi Kokkinakis, Ayla Tomljanovic, Ons Jabert and Felix Auger-Aliassime.
However, in an interesting twist of events, none of those players featured in the documentary have made any progress at the 2023 Australian Open, the first Grand Slam to take place since the series aired.
While three players – Badosa, Kyrgios and Ayla Tomljanovic – got injured as TBS approached, the other 7 players were eliminated early in the tournament.
Matteo Berrettini was the first casualty, losing an epic first-round fight to three-time Grand Slam champion Andy Murray. The Italian lost the match in a super tentative tie-break. Even his 31 aces didn’t help.
Kasper Ruud was then knocked out when he lost in four sets to young American Jenson Brooksby in the second round which was a big sensation as the Norwegian was the second seed.
World number 9, American Taylor Fritz, was also knocked out in the second round. He lost, fighting with Australian Alexei Popyrin.
The win was the biggest career victory for Popyrin, who had never beaten a top 10 player before. Meanwhile, this is Fritz’s second straight quick elimination from a Grand Slam tournament, having also lost in the first round of the US Open four months ago.
Also in the second round, Australian Thanasi Kokkinakis was knocked out, although his loss to Andy Murray could not be called sensational. The early departure of Kokkinakis is already a pattern, especially since in the first round he eliminated the experienced Italian Fabio Fognini.
Finally, the last of the men to fly was Félix Auger-Aliassime. He reached the fourth round with the sixth seed, but failed to break the barrier in little-known Czech Jiri Legechki. As a result, Auger-Aliassiim also failed to qualify for week two of the Australian Open. But of all the tennis players featured on the show, he performed the best. Another thing is that they obviously didn’t expect a fourth round from him.
Moving on to the women, after two of the featured series were injured, at the Australian Open, Maria Sakkari and Ons Jaber, but in terms of level, each of them could qualify for the high stages, if not the final .
Ons Jaber was the second seed behind Iga Šwiętek, but ended up being knocked out in the second round by Czech Marketta Vondrousheva. Sakkari went to the third round, but there she lost to an almost unknown Chinese Zhu Lin with an 87th WTA rating.
So, from the fourth round of the heroes of the series, only Auger-Aliassime remained in the ranks, from the 1/8 finals – none. An early loss at the Australian Open would have been even more disheartening for Matteo Berrettini, who was defending the points from his semi-final at last year’s tournament.
The Italian entered the top 20 at the start of the tournament with 2490 ranking points, but this loss is expected to affect his ranking. He will drop 710 ranking points and be in 21st place at best by the end of the tournament.
Vyacheslav Gorbachev/Athletistic
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Source: Sport
I’m Rose Brown , a journalist and writer with over 10 years of experience in the news industry. I specialize in covering tennis-related news for Athletistic, a leading sports media website. My writing is highly regarded for its quick turnaround and accuracy, as well as my ability to tell compelling stories about the sport.
