Second round sellout all too familiar for Australian men, despite ...
The second round of the Australian Open, like the Boxing Day sales, is an annual stock clearance for Australian men’s tennis. If you are a local player who wins through to the third round, you are either having a career-best moment, or your name is Alex de Minaur.
This year, the sale has gone frustratingly to script. Before Thursday evening’s match between Thanasi Kokkinakis and Bulgaria’s Grigor Dimitrov, only de Minaur had booked passage to the round of 32, leaving our other men’s singles players to lament another home slam over without many ranking points or much prize money to show for it.
Max Purcell joined the second-round exodus after a five-set epic against Norway’s Casper Ruud.Credit: Eddie Jim
Yet, if nothing else, our best males cast in a supporting role have showed that, while they can’t quite keep an Australian Open campaign alive into the second week, they certainly die hard.
Anyone who watched Alexei Popyrin and Jordan Thompson respectively snaffle sets off Novak Djokovic and Stefanos Tsitsipas, or Chris O’Connell push America’s smiling slugger Ben Shelton deep into overtime, would understand that only a few points either way would have changed what has become familiar storyline at Melbourne Park.
And that was before Max Purcell took Norway’s Casper Ruud, an accomplished, three-time grand slam finalist and a former world No.2, all the way to a fifth set tie-break to decide their epic Thursday afternoon encounter, 6-3, 6-7(5-7), 6-3, 3-6, 7-6 (10-7).
Throughout his stay here, Sydney-based Purcell has variously taken issue with the quality of local coffee, the tennis-ball-coloured shirts worn by stadium staff at Melbourne Park – “I’m like, what they fuck are you doing? I can’t see the ball!” – and an absent-minded ball kid who fetched a drink bottle at the wrong time.
As a triumvirate of concerns, they can be duly filed and forgotten, along with other random stuff said over the years by a player kindly described as something of a loose unit. But if there is one thing Purcell has no cause to complain about, it is Melbourne’s notoriously fickle weather.
A day of dark clouds, bright sunshine, rain, occasional warmth and a biting southerly win played havoc with tournament organisers and ground staff, who were forced to abandon play on the outside courts for a good chunk of the afternoon.
For Purcell, whose second round match against Ruud was able to continue snug beneath the Margaret Court Arena roof after starting as an open-air fixture, the rain was a timely blessing.
Throughout an opening set played exposed to the elements, Purcell struggled to find his rhythm and range. He conceded an early break to Ruud when he dumped a simple overhead into the net and then pushed a volley long.
In the only game he seriously challenged Ruud’s serve, he left a swag of break points on the table as Ruud closed out the set just as light mizzle started falling on the court.
The closing of the roof opened new possibilities for Purcell, who returned to court after a short break as a player unrecognisable from the one who drudged off it.
Purcell beat Ruud when the pair met in Cincinnati last year. That was during Purcell’s career-best run at an ATP tour event in what became his breakthrough year as a tennis professional.
Max Purcell looks on as his match against Casper Ruud is interrupted by rain.Credit: Getty
Once his rematch against Ruud shifted indoors, Purcell settled into his work from the service line and showed the attacking instincts and deftness of touch at the net that has made him one of the best doubles players in the world and a valued member of Australia’s Davis Cup team.
He remained unable to break the Norwegian’s serve but played a near faultless tie-break, clinching the second set and squaring the match with a thumping ace out wide.
From there, this match had all the makings of a five-set clinker, and so it proved, with Ruud taking the third and Purcell finally breaking serve to win the fourth.
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The decider produced some of the most rollicking points witnessed at this tournament, with Purcell the more aggressive player but Ruud the more composed when it mattered.
Throughout the nearly four-hour long match, Purcell slapped more aces and more than twice the number of winners than Ruud, and rushed the net more than 100 times. He also produced 65 unforced errors to Ruud’s 19.
Purcell said this hyper-aggressive approach was part of a deliberate strategy to disrupt Ruud’s game. “I wasn’t going to just walk over and beat [number] 11 in the world Casper Ruud,” he said. “I had to bring something else to the table. I had to try to give him no rhythm and go for a lot of shots.”
At the age of 25 and after just his fourth Australian Open match, Purcell has shown he has the game and more than enough chutzpah to challenge the world’s best players. The next step for Australia’s supporting cast is to survive beyond the second-round sales.
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