Promising signs for Australian tennis despite Popyrin, Thompson ...

Alexei Popyrin and Jordan Thompson both lost their second round matches at the Australian Open on Wednesday. On paper, it’s been a challenging tournament so far for Australians. 

Of the 15 Aussie men that began in the Australian Open main draw, just three have made it beyond the first four days of the tournament. Of these, both Max Purcell and Thanasi Kokkinakis are yet to play their second round matches, while Alex de Minaur is through to the third round.

For the women, six started in the main draw. Two remain alive heading into Thursday, with Storm Hunter safely into the third round while Ajla Tomljanovic plays her second round clash later today.

With just a handful of players for the host nation to pin their hopes on heading into the middle weekend of the Australian Open, it’s less the number of Australians remaining in the draw that local fans should take comfort from, and more the manner in which their stars bowed out.

Both Popyrin and Thompson are ranked outside the world’s top 40, and yet they pushed top 10 players to the very brink under the lights last night.

Popyrin squared off against world No 1 Novak Djokovic, having stated ahead of the match that “going to play against Novak is nothing different than going to play against anybody else on Tour.”

This care-free attitude served the 24-year-old well, as he pushed the 24-time Grand Slam to the absolute brink for large swaths of the match. At one stage, after Popyrin won the second set, the Australian had three set points at 5-4, 0-40 on Djokovic’s serve, which would have given him a 2-1 set lead over the Serbian. Djokovic rallied and won the match in four sets, 6-3, 4-6, 7-6(4), 6-3, but Popyrin was not without his chances.

“I was lucky in that game, at that point, to get away,” Djokovic said after the match, referring to the 10th game of the third set where Popyrin had four set points in total. “He was the better player I think for a set and a half, second set and third set, he was the better player.”

A similar story unfolded in Jordan Thompson’s second round match against Stefanos Tsitsipas, which was played parallel to Popyrin vs Djokovic on Margaret Court Arena.

Thompson claimed the opening set with one break of serve, before losing the next three sets to the Greek. However, two of the final three sets went to tiebreakers, with Tsitsipas winning 4-6, 7-6(6), 6-2, 7-6(4). Again, Thompson had multiple opportunities to push the match to a deciding set, with four set points in the fourth set.

“The guy is a top 10 player,” Thompson said of his second round loss at the Australian Open. “There were two tiebreakers in there. Won the first set and lost the second. Fought as hard as I could. 

“I know I was down 5-4, 40-15 in the fourth set, but I still had four set points of my own. I think four. At least three. I got a little unlucky on one of them.”

While Popyrin and Thompson are the most recent matches where underdog Australians have done their nation proud, many of those that failed to make it through the first round also did so with their pride intact.

Jason Kubler, James Duckworth, Rinky Hijikata and Dane Sweeny all lost in the opening round to higher ranked opponents, yet pushed them to five sets. Daria Saville, ranked No 152 also bowed out in the first round, but went the distance with Magdala Frech, a player ranked twice as high. 

Christopher O’Connell made it to the second round, losing only to No 16 seed Ben Shelton, but not without taking a set off the American. Purcell and Kokkinakis also face seeds in their second round matches, and will be hungry for upsets in front of the Aussie crowd.

This is not to mention the true bright spots of Australian tennis this week–De Minaur and Storm, who have both powered their ways into the third round. 

De Minaur was particularly impressive, blasting past up-and-coming Italian Matteo Arnaldi for the loss of just six games.

“Nothing can give you more belief than winning matches, and especially good matches, and I think that’s what I’ve gotten this year,” De Minaur said after his win over Arnaldi.

“Saying that, I feel in a good position where maybe I know if I don’t bring my A game, I still got plenty to show. I’ve won enough matches this year to kind of know how to win certain types of matches.”

With De Minaur the first Australian player to crack the world’s top 10 since Lleyton Hewitt, it’s safe to say that any true hope Aussie fans have of celebrating on the final weekend of the Australian Open rides on the 24-year-old’s shoulders.