{"id":262479,"date":"2023-01-09T12:10:15","date_gmt":"2023-01-09T13:10:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=262479"},"modified":"2023-01-10T07:59:39","modified_gmt":"2023-01-10T07:59:39","slug":"how-kokkinakis-overcame-little-known-curse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=262479","title":{"rendered":"How Kokkinakis overcame little-known 'curse'"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thanasi Kokkinakis<\/a> has overcome what he deemed "a curse" after a perfect first set almost resulted in a shock loss to countryman Alexei Popyrin<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Kokkinakis, last year's Adelaide International<\/a> champion, came out of the gates on fire, winning the first set 6-0 in just over 20 minutes before he was pegged back by the 23-year-old.<\/p>\n

He looked set to lose the match before fighting back from a break down to win it 6-0, 6-7, 7-5 in a terrific contest.<\/p>\n

READ MORE:<\/strong> 'Angry' Djokovic kicks out brother, wins title<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\ufeff<\/a>READ MORE:<\/strong> Tennis rocked by fake vaccination allegation\ufeff<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

READ MORE:<\/strong> Umpires blasted after Aussies denied victory\ufeff<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Following the hard-fought match with Popyrin, Kokkinakis described how he had to fight some mental demons after his flawless start to the match.<\/p>\n

"\ufeffI\ufefft's a curse. When you win a set 6-0 you feel like something's bound to go bad. It was almost going too smooth. I knew there could be a tricky stage," he said.<\/p>\n

\"ADELAIDE,<\/p>\n

Kokkinakis looked as if he was en-route to a comfortable victory in the second set when he had two break points with the scores tied at 3-3. However, he fluffed a regulation overhead smash that would've put him up a break and Popyrin seized the momentum.<\/p>\n

Kokkinakis admitted that he thought the moment could cost him the match.<\/p>\n

"When I missed that smash on break point, that did my head in, and then I regrouped and missed another one and I thought maybe today's not it," he said.<\/p>\n

Watch the Adelaide International 2, live and exclusive on<\/strong><\/em> 9Now<\/strong><\/em><\/a> and<\/strong><\/em> Stan Sport<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

"I was being a bit of a softie for the second part of that match, but I got it together and I toughed it out in the end.<\/p>\n

"I started to get a bit flat. I was kind of feeling sorry for myself\ufeff a little bit, so I had to grow a pair and get back to it."<\/p>\n

Kokkinakis faces a tough clash in the second round with the tournament's No.1 seed, Russia's Andrey Rublev up next.\ufeff<\/p>\n

For a daily dose of the best of the breaking news and exclusive content from Wide World of Sports, subscribe to our newsletter by<\/strong><\/em> clicking here<\/strong><\/em><\/a>!\u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thanasi Kokkinakis has overcome what he deemed "a curse" after a perfect first set almost resulted in a shock loss to countryman Alexei Popyrin. Kokkinakis, […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262479"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=262479"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":262481,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262479\/revisions\/262481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=262479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=262479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=262479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}