Thanasi Kokkinakis had a very honest reaction to losing on the ending side in what was the longest best-of-three set match of the season. In three hours and 31 minutes of grueling battle at the Miami Masters, Hubert Hurkacz saved five match points en route to outlasting Kokkinakis 6-7 (10) 7-6 (7) 7-6 (6).
After falling short to Andy Murray in an Australian Open match that lasted nearly six hours, Kokkinakis tweeted: “This f—— sport” Two months later, Kokkinakis used the same tweet from the Australian Open.
Retweetð¶ https://t.co/EAWETIFqNK — Thanasi Kokkinakis (@TKokkinakis) March 26, 2023
Kokkinakis had five match points against Hurkacz
In the second-set tie-break, Kokkinakis had a 6-4 lead and two consecutive match points.
After failing to realize any of his first two match points, Kokkinakis had his third match point at 7-6. But Kokkinakis missed out on his third match point as well and that was punished as Hurkacz converted his first set point to send the match into a decider.
In the third-set tie-break, Kokkinakis had a 6-4 lead and two more consecutive points. But Hurkacz responded by winning the next four points and completing a three-set win. “It’s tough to explain for me. I knew I was playing good tennis, I mean Thanasi [was] as well.
I was just trying to stay in there and compete, play some good shots. Either way, if I won or I lost — obviously I wanted to win so, so much — but either way [I] should have been happy with myself,” Hurkacz said after beating Kokkinakis.
When Hurkacz was down match points, his mindset to not give anything easy to Kokkinakis. “Stealing a couple of points puts a little bit more pressure on the opponent and then sometimes the opponent tries to go for a bit extra and [with] that bit extra, you can miss that shot.
I was trying to make an effort to compete for every single ball and put some pressure,” Hurkacz added.
