Kokkinakis and Wawrinka keep it out of the gutter

Nick Kyrgios billed it as a grudge match between Thanasi Kokkinakis and Stan Wawrinka. Kyrgios was wrong.

Australia's Thanasi Kokkinakis plays a forehand return to Switzerland's Stan Wawrinka Picture: AFP

Nick Kyrgios tried to drag into the gutter. Make it tabloid. Thanasi Kokkinakis kept it nice and broadsheet. The only rubbish in him was the thunderbolt of doubt at the start of a wild fifth set against Stan Wawrinka. The memories of the all-nighter against Andy Murray that left him heartbroken at the Australian Open.

Kyrgios threw Kokkinakis, Wawrinka and Donna Vekic under the bus years ago. Who bonked who and all that nonsense. His crudeness hurt, embarrassed, angered and disappointed them all. Wawrinka had to be restrained from putting one on Kyrgios’ chin in the locker room. From the safety of Canberra this week, Kyrgios billed his mate versus his nemesis as a grudge match. Ill-will was non-existent. Kokkinakis’ emotionally draining and physically taxing 3-6, 7-5, 6-3, 6-7 (4-7), 6-3 triumph over the three-time major champion was one of the matches of the year. Played in an atmosphere of mutual respect.

Wawrinka is a bar-room brawler of a player, strong as a mule, revered, strong-willed, accomplished as a three-time major champion and not immune to treating certain opponents with disdain. The opponents who piss him off, like Holger Rune. He treated Kokkinakis with nothing but decency. Covered in clay, sweat, they embraced after a four-hour sporting war that proved yet again there’s no better tennis than five-set grand slam tennis. Now Kokkinakis faces Russia’s 11th-seeded giant Karen Khachanov on Friday for his first berth in the fourth round at a major.

“Stan is a legend,“ Kokkinakis said of the 38-year-old Wawrinka. ”Still is, obviously. He was a legend out on court today. He was very nice, very respectful. Yeah, hats off to him. The first set and a half he was playing, I think, the best tennis he can play. I was just trying to hang in there. I lost a match in a grand slam earlier this year against Murray from two sets to love up. I didn‘t want to do it against another legend.”

Stan Wawrinka plays a backhand against Thanasi Kokkinakis Picture: Getty Images

Leading by a set and a break, clubbing the ball, Wawrinka started playing too tentatively. Too carefully. Thought he had it in the bag. Kokkinakis scraped through the second set and then hit his straps. He had all the momentum in the fourth set, only for Wawrinka to pinch the tie-breaker, which was when Kokkinakis had flashbacks of the chaotic wee hours of January 20, when his five-set defeat to Murray was completed at 4.05am. When he departed Melbourne Park at the same time as the city’s ravers were leaving their nightclubs, he was totally and utterly knackered. Devastated. All of which came back to mind when Wawrinka forced a fifth set in Paris and the patrons went bonkers for him like they had done for Murray in Melbourne.

Kokkinakis was up against Wawrinka and virtually every spectator crammed around the 5,000-seat Court Simonne-Mathieu. “When he was coming back in the fourth set, and the crowd was going nuts, I was, like, ‘Oh, God, it’s one of these ones again. Oh no, it’s happening again.’ The amount of rubbish that goes through your head. I was, like, ‘Forty-love, I’ve got a bit of a cushion, stay focused. It went back to deuce. I was, like, ‘Oh, no’. The crowd was going nuts. ‘I can’t lose another one of these.’ But they’re the fun ones. They’re what you play for. Against legends who make it really tough on you. You can’t count these guys out, no matter how old they are. They just play. They get better and better and you can see why they are multiple grand slam champions.”

Thanasi Kokkinakis serves against Stan Wawrinka Picture: AFP

Elsewhere, things were predictable, Novak Djokovic winning and annoying everyone again. I have sympathy for him. He’s copping heat for his political statement about Kosovo being the heart of Serbia. Good on him, I say. Why can’t athletes make political statements? Fox News host Laura Ingraham once told LeBron James to “shut up and dribble.” Is that what we want? Djokovic and everyone else to shut up and hit forehands? Djokovic moved into the third round, and attempted to move on, amid a study of dubious merit that found he received the most negative tweets of any player in the tournament.

“Does that surprise you?” he said. “Personally, I’d be surprised if it were any different. As Kobe (Bryant) used to say, it’s a great quote: ‘Haters are a good problem to have. Nobody hates the good ones. They only hate the great ones.’ I don’t hate anybody. I don’t nurture that kind of emotion and I don’t raise my kids that way. Hate is a horrendous emotion. If someone hates me, I think that says more about that person than me. I wouldn’t change anything in my life because I’ve done everything to the best of my knowledge and abilities in a particular moment. Yes, I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but at least I was authentic, I was being myself. I’d choose that every time compared to saying whatever pleases those that abide by the standards of the establishment.”