16-year-old Queenslander Tahlia Kokkinis joins first-seed Emerson Jones as the only Australians to make it into the third-round of the junior singles.
Kokkinis was the lone Australian winner on Day 9 of the Australian Open, as boys Ymerali Ibraimi and Duje Markovina both crashed out in straight sets to the second and ninth seeds respectively.
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In a see-sawing affair on court 3, the highly-touted National Tennis Academy product earned a gutsy win over Japan’s Kanon Sawashiro 6-2, 3-6, 6-4 in two hours and 18 minutes.
"I felt this energy, and it really inspired me and motivated me," Kokkinis told Tennis Australia when speaking of the local crowd.
"When I have a crowd that supports me, honestly, it’s the greatest feeling I think a tennis player can possibly have and when I see [like with] the pro tennis players and the crowd help me, I didn’t know what that meant until today, and a couple of days ago as well."
A wildcard into the event, Kokkinis looked in complete disbelief as she sealed the win before banging her clenched fists to her thighs in an Alex de Minaur-esque "the legs are back" type announcement.
Awaiting her in the third round, in the opening match on Court 3 tomorrow, will be Brooke Black, a qualifier from the United Kingdom.
Should Kokkinis and Jones continue to progress, the pair could meet in an all-Australian semi-final.
Despite a scorching day at Melbourne Park for Day 10, there was plenty of wheelchair action across the outside courts.
Not a great day for the Australians, but there was one winner today.
In round one of the men’s Quad singles, unfortunately, two Aussies faced off against each other. Veteran Heath Davidson took on young wildcard Jin Woodman, and it was the latter who came away with the win after three tough sets, 7-6 2-6 6-3.
Woodman will take on fourth-seed Ahmet Kaplan in the quarter-finals, who defeated another Australian wildcard, Finn Broadbent 6-1 6-1.
The men’s wheelchair singles also got underway today, with Australia’s only representative, wildcard Anderson Parker, drawn to take on No.1 seed Tokito Oda. Oda was too good for Parker, moving on to the next round, 6-0 6-3.
In the boys' wheelchair singles event, Benjamin Wenzel lost his first match to No.2 seed Alexander Lantermann 4-6 1-6. He’ll have two more chances to get onto the winner's list in the round-robin event.
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