Ten days after blowing Novak Djokovic off the clay in sunny Paris, Stan Wawrinka was a loser on the grass at muggy Queen's, Kevin Anderson securing a path through to the third round of the Aegon Championships with a booming serve down the middle.
The world No4 from Switzerland got an outside edge on that one but there were 22 others that whistled past him unanswered like Dale Steyn bouncers as the 6ft 8in South African used up six match points to win 7-6, 7-6 after an hour and 50 minutes that seemed a lot longer.
It was Anderson’s fourth successive win over Wawrinka in seven matches, and the second time the Swiss has lost to him immediately after winning a major, following on from Indian Wells last year while he was still luxuriating in the glow of his breakthrough in Melbourne six weeks earlier.
This win confirms that Anderson’s world ranking of 17 correctly identifies his threat, especially on grass. He will be dangerous in the first week of Wimbledon if he gets a favourable draw.
This, though, was Kevin’s time to talk. “I play good tennis against him. I can take a lot of confidence from that and take that same sort of belief against some of the other top guys. I’ve played these guys a lot of times. It gives me confidence knowing the guy I beat today just won the French Open – and watched him beat the best players in the world doing it.
“The times I have played him, I’ve served very well. I have been aggressive from the back. But we have had close matches. When he has time setting up from the baseline, he’s very dangerous. That’s something I try to do, take time away from him. The last six slams he’s won two and Novak [Djokovic]has two – and nobody else has that. So you can make a pretty strong case that he’s really proved himself to be one of the top four guys in the world.”
Wawrinka did not play badly – he hit 11 aces of his own and scored only 10 fewer points than the 94 Anderson fashioned – but it is tough to get into a match when an opponent is trying to take your head off with every serve. Neither could break serve outside the tie-breaks.
For now at least, Thanasi Kokkinakis is a name tough to spell but easy to appreciate. Although the young Australian with the Andy Murray stamp of approval went out 6-4, 6-2 against the former world top-tenner Gilles Simon, he left us with a few shots to savour, then, after his doubles with Lleyton Hewitt, looked forward to catching up on sleep after an extraordinary around-the-world hike these past few days.
Asked to explain how he could not build on a blinding start before going down in flames after only 76 minutes, Kokkinakis was commendably candid. “Yeah,” he said in his Adelaide drawl, “it went all downhill from there.”
Seven aces and four double faults from only nine service games told a story of a tired young man in a hurry; Kokkinakis had dashed from Rome to Australia for 30 hours with his family, who have been gathering around his ailing grandmother, and completed a 48-hour round trip when he landed in London on Monday afternoon – and went straight out and beat Jérémy Chardy 6-7, 6-2, 6-4.
However, the No7 seed, Simon, proved a Frenchman too far, breaking him four times. “I started really well,” Kokkinakis said. “I was relaxed and free and played a couple of stupid points on my service game. I really needed to put the foot down at 2-0.
“He started growing in confidence and I started to get negative, to get tighter with my shots, and didn’t feel like I was swinging freely at all.
“I was a little bit fatigued but my ball striking wasn’t great either.
“I’m not going to use that too much as an excuse. I felt bad for everyone watching really. It was a bit disappointing. It was one of my poorest performances in a while.”
Oh, and he had the distraction of Jeremy Clarkson sitting not far from his box. What chance did he have?
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