He is only 26 years old, but due to his precociousness (he won his first ATP points with 15) it seems that he has been with us all his life. From the same generation as Nick Kyrgios, who is one year older and turned professional, like him, in 2013, Thanasi Kokkinakis is the other enfant terrible Australian tennis. A talented player, who was intuited to have a good career, who in the end has come to nothing (and despite his young age it doesn’t seem like he’s going to improve much) because he never finished making tennis his priority, although less controversial than his compatriot. This Friday, in the first duel of the semifinals of the Davis cup between Australia and Croatia, he left the impression, as many other times, of being better than the man in front of him, but it was Coric, more prosaic, who took the plunge (6-4 and 6-3 in 1h34) at the Martín Carpena in Malaga. The one from Zagreb is now 13-9 in Davis and ‘Special K’, as the oceanic player is nicknamed in a play on words with the famous cereals, at 4-4.
Involuntary protagonist of a high-profile incident, the one caused by Kyrgios when, in 2015, during a match, he told Stan Wawrinka that Thanasi had slept with his girlfriend at the time, Donna Vekic, threatened his rival’s service on several occasions, but every time he took a 0-30 or 15-30, his own mistakes buried his chances of getting closer to the break. In the end he only managed to make one break ball in the entire game, aborted.
Much more effective was Coric, 26th in the ranking, who took advantage of three of the five granted by the aussie. One in the first set, when it was left to win it. He got 15-40 and managed to overcome Kokkinakis. But he would have a new oversight, this already fatal one. In the third game of the second set he had his only real option of the match. He didn’t know how to get him out, he played the 95th ATP racket. Coric, on the other hand, did bite when he could, for a 4-2 with which he only had to limit himself to defending his serve to leave Croatia in a very good fight for the rest of the tie. With the peace of mind that their high-calibre doubles give the Balkans, Cilic will play more freely against De Miñaur. Australia has been given the Davis in Chinese.
