The US Open is approaching the final stages with Novak Djokovic and Andy Murray expected to be battling it out for the men’s title, whilst it is hard to look past Serena Williams not adding another grand slam to her illustrious career. However, here at Lucky Nugget Casino, we don’t care about the big names. We were feeling patriotic and supporting the Aussies, but unfortunately there wasn’t much to shout about.
Kyrgios comes in for criticism… again!
Once again, the attitude and commitment of Nick Kyrgios has come in for questioning from the tennis experts, with John McEnroe the latest to take a swipe at the Australian. However, at least with Nick we can say he didn’t lose a match this tournament, it’s something.
He succumbed to injury in his 3rd round match against Illya Marchenko, although the Ukrainian was leading by two sets to one.
Kyrgios had complained of injury during his first two rounds, and although McEnroe was not accusing him of faking the injury, the American is adamant it stems from not training enough and applying himself to the sport. He may have a point.
Undoubtedly talented, Kyrigos has still yet to live up to his potential however, and this was another damp squib of a major.
Tomic takes the bad-boy tag
While Bernard Tomic is by no means an angel and has courted controversy in the past, it’s fair to say the bad-boy of Australian tennis was always Kyrgios. Yet, this US Open Tomic has done his bit to try and wrestle that tag from his compatriot.
He has been hit with a $10,000 fine for a vulgar outburst, where he told a spectator to ‘suck my ba**s’.
In fairness, the Australian had been heckled throughout the match, but it’s still an awful reaction.
This was compounded as he would go on to lose the match and was therefore eliminated in the first round against Bosnia’s Damir Džumhur.
A very poor show.
Stosur suffers at hands of her doubles team-mate!
It was more bad news for Australia on the women’s side of the draw. The 2011 champion and 16th seed Sam Stosur fell to her doubles partner Zhang Shuai.
Shuai was as shocked as anyone, telling the media that before the game she struggled to believe she would be able to beat the player she knows so well.
Stosur would have hoped, and expected, to make an impact further on in the tournament and will be disappointed she lost to her partner, particularly after she had got the best of her recently at the French Open.
A small positive
In some positive news, James Duckworth did manage to achieve his own personal best at the US Open after getting to the 2nd round before losing in four-sets to the powerful Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.
So, there you have it. It really was a disappointing showing from our players in the US Open. We didn’t even get the All-Australian clash that would certainly have been spicy between Kyrgios and Tomic after the latter’s early exit. It’s worrying with the Australian Open on the horizon in January, but hopefully it will be the catalyst for these players to knuckle down and improve ahead of playing on their home soil. But look on the bright side, it will be hard to be as bad…
