Australia’s Thanasi Kokkinakis was bundled out of the Adelaide International in the Round of 32 by Serbia’s Dusan Lajovic 3-6, 6-1, 6-4 on Monday night.
Playing in his home tournament, the South Aussie couldn’t recapture the form that saw him win it all in the City of Churches in 2022 with Lajovic recovering from a slow start to progress to the Round of 16.
The result means that Kokkinakis enters the upcoming Australian Open winless since October and SEN tennis expert Brett Phillips believes last night’s performance was another example of the 27-year-old failing to win after having the advantage early on.
“I think last night sort of typified his matches. His matches are a rollercoaster,” Phillips said on SEN Mornings.
“If you look back at all his results while he has been fit and healthy, which has been great, that’s been the first box for him to tick. In the last couple of years, we’ve seen a lot of him play.
“But in a lot of his matches, he has the advantage, he then loses the momentum, he gets it back and it turns into titanic struggles.
“Not so much last night, but a lot of his matches will go to third-set tie-breaks, or they stretch two or three hours.
“For all the firepower that he's got, he just can't seem to put opponents away and there's that sort of mental disintegration through matches as well.
“He had the crowd right there with him, a great crowd in Adelaide courtside last night - they got him bouncing up and early.
“But then in the blink of an eye he sort of just lost that - he'll go wandering, the mind will sort of wander a little bit.”
As things stand, Kokkinakis is ranked 65th – the highest ranking of his career, but Phillips isn’t sure he has what it takes to break into the top 50.
While Kokkinakis has won three of his 14 matches against top-10-ranked players, Phillips expects Kokkinakis to continue to sit somewhere between 50 and 100 in the ATP rankings.
“He can sit between 50 and 100 all year, which he's good enough to do,” Phillips said.
“You’ve got to win enough matches in key tournaments (to rank between 50 and 100), and that'll earn you a pretty good living.
“I just don't know whether he has got it in him to take his tennis further. That's the question mark I have.”
Kokkinakis previously told SEN that his goal for 2024 is to break into the top 50.
