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Suffering with what appeared to be a full-body cramp, Jannik Sinner had just gone down a break in the third set to a little-known American and was facing a stunning Australian Open exit – until the tournament’s extreme heat rules came to his rescue.
World No.2 Sinner, scheduled in the hottest part of the day while 10-time champion and No.4 seed Novak Djokovic was allocated the cooler night session on Rod Laver Arena for his third-round match, had drawn Eliot Spizzirri in what appeared to be a regulation contest for the champion Italian.
Two-time reigning men’s Australian Open champion Jannik Sinner as he began to cramp.Credit: Eddie Jim
But 12 months after Sinner wilted on court – in last year’s fourth round against Holger Rune – he again struggled in the stifling conditions as the temperature rose into the high 30s. He dropped the opening set against the world No.85 as the full-body cramping slowly but surely took a greater toll.
Sinner recovered enough to stage a great escape, winning 4-6, 6-3, 6-4, 6-4, after the heat rules altered the complexion of the match.
The two-time Australian Open defending champion admitted he “got lucky” in the circumstances, conceding he needs to look into his physical preparation for coping with blanketing heat.
“I struggled physically a bit today – we saw this. I got lucky with the heat rule,” Sinner said on court.
“They closed the roof. I took my time, and as the time passed I felt better and better.
“I was cramping a bit all over ... this is an area where I need to improve. I just tried to stay as calm as possible, but at the end of the day tennis is a very mental game.”
Later, in his post-match media conference, Sinner was pressed further about his “luck” after also dodging a bullet against Rune last year when, in distressing scenes, he battled in the heat, trembling and shaking, even though the temperature was noticeably lower.
“I try to stay calm even in a moment like this,” Sinner said about the events on Saturday. “If he keeps playing the way he was playing, maybe I was dropping a little bit, maybe my tournament was over today. I don’t know.”
His lower-ranked opponent was more magnanimous.
“I don’t know if he [Sinner] got saved by it,” said Spizzirri.
“I smiled a little bit when the heat rule went into effect, just because it was kind of funny timing as I went up 3-1, but at the same time, you know, the game at 2-1 in the third set was when the heat, when it hit, I think it’s 5.0 [on the tournament’s heat stress scale], which means that the heat rule is in effect.
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“It was just funny that right when I broke, and he was wobbling, that it happened to happen that way.
“But at the same time, that’s the rules of the game, and you’ve got to live with it.”
Regardless, when Sinner was “wobbling”, his team knew the danger of the moment. His Australian coach, Darren Cahill, took advantage of the proximity of the on-court coaching pods to say: “You just need to get through the third set mate, even if you just walk around, don’t worry.”
With Sinner cramping even more, reeling from a 20-point rally in a game in which the Italian dropped serve to fall behind 1-3, chair umpire Fergus Murphy announced that the tournament was implementing the last stage of its heat policy: suspending play on outside courts and closing the roof on the stadium courts.
The timing could not have been any better for Sinner, and any worse for Spizzirri.
In TV commentary, Australian great Todd Woodbridge said Sinner could “thank his lucky stars”.
“Who knows what might have happened if play in that third set had continued for another 10-15 minutes,” said Woodbridge on Nine, owner of this masthead.
“He can thank his lucky stars the heat kept climbing, and he had that opportunity to get off court and receive that bit of treatment, get that fluid, the pickle juice in the fight off those cramps.”
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Later, however, Sinner was not as desperate to find an answer to questions about conditioning.
“I feel like, you know, sometimes there are... no real explanations,” he said. “There is sometimes, for example, this night, I didn’t sleep ... the way I wanted to.
“The quality of sleep was not perfect. Maybe it was this, maybe not. I tried to be in the best-possible shape every, every day recovery, everything going in the right direction.
“I know my body a little bit better now, and I hope that it goes slowly away, which, you know that was the case today with the rules.”
Sinner confirmed that during the break while the roof was closed, which lasted about 15 minutes, he wasn’t able to receive treatment off court. Instead, he took a few minutes to lie down.
“I was alone – there was no treatment,” he said. “You cannot have treatment in that time. So I was, you know, stretching.
“I laid down for five minutes and [was] trying to loosen up the muscles. And it worked really well... Trying to get, you know, the body temperature a bit more down, and that’s it – time passed quite, quite fast.”
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