MELBOURNE – Stefanos Tsitsipas had a harder time sticking to all the rules than outplaying his opponent in the early stages recovered after losing two match points late in the third set and eventually reached the final on Australian Open for the first time with a 7: 6 (2), 6: 4, 6: 7 (6), 6: 3 against Karen Khachanov on Friday.
3-seeded Tsitsipas was 3-0 in the semifinals at Melbourne Park, but he eventually went one step further to claim the second Grand Slam championship game of his career.
It looked easy for most of the three sets against Khachanov, but Tsitsipas was broken when he served for the match at 5-4 in the third, and then failed to take a chance to end it when he tied in the ensuing tie break with 6-4 lead. Khachanov accumulated four straight points there, erasing match points with two booming forehands. However, Tsitsipas bounced back quickly and took a 3-0 lead in the fourth.
Now Tsitsipas will be confronted Novak Djokovic or unseeded American Tommy Paul in the men’s singles final on Sunday.
Djokovic has won the Australian Open nine times and owns 21 Grand Slam titles in total – only Rafael Nadal has more in the men’s with 22 – and contributed to a 26-game winning streak at Melbourne Park The second semi-final on Friday. As of this week, Paul had never progressed past the fourth round in 13 previous appearances in major tournaments.
Tsitsipas’ other run to a grand final came at the 2021 French Open, when he secured the opening two sets before squandering that huge lead, losing to Djokovic in five.
Earlier this week, Djokovic said of Tsitsipas: “He’s never played a final, am I wrong?” Reminded of Roland Garros by reporters, Djokovic replied: “That’s right. I’m sorry.”
For around 2 1/2 hours on Friday in the Rod Laver Arena, which started cloudless and with temperatures above 25 degrees Celsius, the 24-year-old Greek showed a game that was too varied and shots that were too constant all over the place for the 18th place .seeded Khachanov, a Russian who is now 2-0 in the Slam semifinals.
The biggest problem for Tsitsipas in that span of time honestly seemed to be trying to cope with the watchful eyes of match officials who were monitoring the 25-second clock and the position of his feet.
The first warning from chair umpire Nico Helwerth for exceeding the time came while Tsitsipas served the first set 5-3, 15-1. Perhaps distracted, he double-faulted to pursue Love-30 and ended up getting broken there.
The service clock ran out again at 5-all, love-15 and the second infraction resulted in an automatic error that prompted Tsitsipas’ father – who coaches him alongside former player Mark Philippoussis – to get up from his seat on the sidelines. Again, Tsitsipas made a double fault to fall behind Love-30 again, but this time he managed to hold and was vastly superior in the ensuing tiebreaker, ignoring a foot fault at 3-1.
There were more foot faults in the second set, and after one, Helwerth explained the problem: Tsitsipas’ back foot was stretched too far back on serve from the deuce side, putting his shoe over the midline.
Tsitsipas would continue to break to 5-4, helped by a wild point that saw him receive three overheads back from Khachanov, drawing roars from the many spectators waving blue-and-white Greek flags. He soon snapped up this set. He broke again to lead 2-1 in the third but failed to slam the door.
Instead, Tsitsipas, who lost to Rafael Nadal in the Melbourne semifinals in 2019 and to Daniil Medvedev in 2021 and 2022, had to wait 40 minutes from his first match point to his last.
On serve in the fourth set at 5-3, 40-Love, he missed a forehand volley in 3rd place. “Oh, oh,” he might have been forgiven for the thought. But on the next point, chance #4, he hit a serve that pulled a long return and breathed out.
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