Greek -Australian Thanasi
Kokkinakis has overcome injury, a two-set deficit and three match points to
oust seeded Australian countryman Bernard Tomic and set up a third-round French
Open showdown with Novak Djokovic.
Kokkinakis
looked to have cruelled his chances after hurting his hip and cutting his
stomach in a nasty tumble deep in the fourth set.
But the
tenacious teenager recovered after two medical time-outs to claw his way back
from 5-2 down in the fifth and deciding set to prevail 3-6 3-6 6-3 6-4 8-6
after three hours and 22 minutes.
"My hip
is pretty sore," he said.
"Physically
I felt pretty good the whole match, though. Just trusted the work I did all
through.
"I had
a lot of matches so I felt like I had the miles under my legs. But, yeah, my
hip is pretty sore right now."
Djokovic
confirmed his appointment with Kokkinakis on Saturday with a 6-1 6-4 6-4
dismissal of Gilles Muller.
"I just
can't wait to get out there," Kokkinakis said.
"I am
going to give it what I got and hopefully I come out with the right
result."
Kokkinakis
and seeded big guns Nick Kyrgios and Samantha Stosur are Australia's last three
survivors in the singles draws.
Kyrgios will
face world No.3 Andy Murray, a 6-2 4-6 6-4 6-1 winner over Joao Sousa, for a
spot in the round of 16 after being handed a walkover into the last 32 when his
scheduled British opponent Kyle Edmund withdrew because of an abdominal strain.
Stosur, a
former runner-up and two-times semi-finalist, takes on defending champion Maria
Sharapova on Friday in the first big women's showdown of the tournament.
Battling an
energy-sapping virus, Tomic entered Thursday's match under a fitness cloud, but
he played two fine first sets to look in total command as Kokkinakis was unable
to convert any of his first 12 break-point chances.
"Every
time I didn't take a break point it was like someone shot an arrow to me,"
Kokkinakis said.
"I
can't even explain how berserk I was going. At one point I said, get me off the
court. Luckily I didn't."
Kokkinakis
seemed to have wrestled back control until his fall, with even Tomic believing
his Davis Cup teammate was in big trouble.
"I
actually thought he could have hurt himself a lot more," Tomic said.
"I saw
in the locker-room, he has a lot of problems in that thing, a lot of blood.
"I'm
happy that he's okay because that fall is much worse than it looked ... he
could have got a lot more injured because of that."
Kokkinakis,
who pulled off a similarly courageous five-set first-round win over world No.11
Ernests Gulbis, broke Tomic again to nudge ahead 7-6 and calmly served out the
match after three hours and 22 minutes.
"He did
a good job to come back. I kind of screwed up in the end," Tomic said.
"Good
credit to him
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