Honestly probably the best server I played this tournament, the way he was hitting his spots under pressure. There were opportunities, but the ball was invariably bombed down from eight feet in the air and past Kyrgios before he could realise them. So when Kyrgios was broken in the very first game of the decider, he perhaps knew he would get precious few chances to get it back. When Ruud watched the tape of this match back, he will see there is no spot the enormous Russian cannot hit with his serve on break point. It was the first, and perhaps the only time, where Khachanov did not serve impeccably under pressure. It was only in the rarified atmosphere of the tie-break, where he won six of the first seven points, that he seemed able to turn on his tactical brain. A double-fault in the very next game and an inexplicable serve-and-volley handed the break straight back. Kyrgios though could not maintain concentration. Like releasing a coiled spring, they quickly became part of the match, with umpire James Keothavong forced to play schoolmaster on almost every point in the closing stages. It did so in the fifth game of the fourth set, when Kyrgios forced a break of serve and asked for more than the crowd, who had been waiting for their signal.
If anyone should have been flat, it was Khachanov, who had played five gruelling sets against Pablo Carreno-Busta, during which the Spaniard received treatment for heat exhaustion.īut the match was such that it did not take much out of either player – by the time the third set finished, the match had still not passed two hours, but it had also not yet come alive. At the end of the match, honestly I felt fine. “I didn’t end up feeling it towards the third, fourth and fifth. “Everyone is carrying a bit of a niggle right now. Just came out, I just split-stepped and just tweaked it a little bit,” Kyrgios explained. “I’ve been playing a lot of tennis the last couple months. Kyrgios too was oddly flat, complaining of a calf injury inside the first three games of the match and receiving a medical timeout to have treatment on it after dropping the first set. Opinion | Potapova controversy shows Wimbledon the pitfalls of allowing Russian players in 15 March, 2023 Emma Raducanu vs Iga Swiatek is British No 1’s biggest match since US Open final 14 March, 2023 Clare Balding confirmed as new BBC Wimbledon host replacing Sue Barker 09 March, 2023
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