Tennis battler beats the pros to take home $1 million jackpot<\/a><\/p>\nSydneysider Jordan Smith has beaten grand slam champion Jannik Sinner and dual grand slam finalist Amanda Anasimova to take home the prize in the novelty format.<\/p>\n
“They’re very friendly and very down to earth,” he said.<\/p>\n
“They helped me out. I asked a few of them for advice and it was pretty cool to just be around them and enjoy it.”<\/p>\n
But no advice was required as the Italian superstar hit the net cord with his one and only serve to end the match-up before it truly began, with world number one Carlos Alcaraz courtside to mock Sinner’s tight attempt.<\/p>\n
Next up was the runner-up from the last two women’s grand slam singles finals, world number four Amanda Anisimiova, who didn’t get her forehand return back into play after a taxing point to take down Daniil Medvedev.<\/p>\n
Men’s world number 71 Pedro Martinez, fresh off lifting the trophy at the Bengaluru Challenger event in India earlier this month, was next and sprayed a backhand long after a tentative rally, sending Smith into the final.<\/p>\n
On the other side of the draw, women’s world number 117 Joanna Garland had rolled past men’s major runner-ups Nick Kyrgios and Alex Zverev, plus Olympic silver medallist Donna Veki\u0107, en route to the decider.<\/p>\n
Garland, who just won the WTA Canberra International last week, said the prize money could help fund her on the tour for a couple of years<\/p>\n
She chose to serve but sent her next backhand wide, handing the cash to Smith.<\/p>\n
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Smith was speechless on court immediately after the fact, but did say he planned to use the money to buy a house with his partner Jess, who was up in the stands at Melbourne Park.<\/p>\n
She was sitting alongside Smith’s parents, Neil and Michelle, who started Smith’s love affair with tennis when he was just three.<\/p>\n
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Jordan Smith won the NSW qualifiers for the 1 Point Slam last month. (Supplied: Tennis NSW)<\/p>\n
For more than 30 years they have run the Castle Hill Tennis Academy in Sydney’s north-west.<\/p>\n
Neil coached Jordan, the youngest of the three, when he won five national junior titles (two singles and three doubles) from 2008 to 2012 before spending a year on the US college scene at Gonzaga on an athletic scholarship in 2015-16.<\/p>\n
Homesickness, COVID and the financial difficulties of being a lower-ranked player on tour \u2014 Smith reached a career-high singles ranking of 1,141 in 2023 \u2014 led him back to Castle Hill to coach alongside his dad and brothers Blake and Cameron.<\/p>\n
ABC Sport Daily podcast<\/a><\/p>\nABC Sport Daily is your daily sports conversation. We dive into the biggest story of the day and get you up to speed with everything else that’s making headlines.<\/p>\n
Smith made it through last month’s qualifiers at the North Shore Open to be crowned the NSW state champion.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Smith said his whole family was stunned he made it through the high-pressure tournament. And so was he.<\/p>\n
“I tried to keep it pretty level the whole time, just smile,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I was going into it thinking I was gonna win one point and it just kept happening and kept getting the points.<\/p>\n
“[I was] just trying to smile as much as I can and just enjoy the moment.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the space of just a couple of points, Jordan Smith went from a relative unknown to a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":413766,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[218746,64,63,6571,85,747],"class_list":["post-413765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-1-point-slam","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-open","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=413765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413765\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/413766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}