In the end, this statement was true, but not for the player they expected. In an eventful marathon match, Thompson suffered a heartbreaking loss to Borges 6-7 (9-11), 6-3, 6-2, 6-4.
Thompson will need to be lucky for the 14th time to get past the second round in Australia.
It was not an easy match for the Australian, especially when he suffered a breakdown in the third set on a foot fault and then a fault on his second serve.
Thompson became frustrated and sent the ball flying high, prompting referee Arnaud Gabas to give him a warning for abusing the ball.
During his substitution, Thompson expressed his dissatisfaction with Gabas.
“You can understand my frustration, because I’ve been playing all this time.” [undecipherable] “I hadn’t had a foot fault in years, and all of a sudden today I did five foot faults,” Thompson said.
“Unless something changes? But I can’t say I want you to see that either.”
Foot faults cannot be replayed on screen like close line calls.
Thompson in the second round against Nuno Borges.credit: penny stevens
“You can check everything else, but then something like this happens and you don’t even know what happened. I mean, the system fails half the time. I had to go down twice for the system the other day. That’s not that much to ask.”
It helped derail the entire match, following a brave first set that Thompson won in a tiebreak.
When Borges beat Thompson 4-4 in the fourth, serving for a set, the Australian threw his racket in frustration. That just summed up how the crowd felt at ANZ Arena, which was filled with anticipation at the start of the match.
The crowd went wild when Thompson took to the court, and the Australian supporters were in chaos during the match, with the booze, sun and traditional Australian antics making the stadium at times more like a circus tent than a tennis match.
But by the time Borges entered the game, the stadium was uncharacteristically quiet.
Australia’s Ajla Tomljanovic plays a forehand with Romania’s Elena Gabriela Ruse.credit: Getty Images
By then Hong had also been eliminated, one of Australia’s four defeats before de Minaur rose again.
Not long after Thompson’s loss, Tomljanovic lost her match to Romania’s Elena-Gabriela Ruse 6-4, 6-4.
Tomljanovic made a brief comeback early in the second set, converting the first break point of the match to take a 3-1 lead, but conceding a straight break in his next service game was the beginning of the end.
credit: matt golding
Ruse hit twice as many winners as Tomljanovic (22-11) and made three fewer unforced errors, making it a huge win to reach the round of 32 for the second time in a Grand Slam.
Tomljanovic hasn’t played in a major since the 2023 U.S. Open.
On a positive note, the shoulder injury she apparently sustained in Adelaide the week before the Australian Open does not appear to have affected her activities at Melbourne Park.
Earlier, Diana Schneider defeated Talia Gibson 3-6, 7-5, 6-3, while Storm Hunter lost in straight sets to Haley Baptiste.
Gibson played the first set perfectly, she was the better serve and hit the ball beautifully. However, the match went away from her as Schneider, the more experienced of the two, took control.
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