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<\/p>\nDiminutive Dane Sweeny and qualifier Tristan Schoolkate have stormed into the US Open second round to continue Australia’s excellent start to the season’s final grand slam.<\/p>\n
Sweeny was leading the crafty Corentin Moutet 7-6(4), 6-4, 3-0 when the Frenchman retired injured on Tuesday, local time.<\/p>\n
US Open day two recap from New York<\/p>\n
Schoolkate then celebrated like Lleyton Hewitt when he finished off American qualifier Nishesh Basavareddy 7-6 (4), 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 in a tick over three hours.<\/p>\n
The 25-year-old Sweeny marked his maiden appearance in the US Open main draw with a first-ever victory at an overseas grand slam.<\/p>\n
The wildcard next faces either Italian 13th seed Lorenzo Musetti or rising Brit Arthur Fery for an improbable place in the last 32.<\/p>\n
Schoolkate is into round two for a second time and will next play Italian fifth seed Fabio Cobolli, the 2026 French Open runner-up.<\/p>\n
Sweeny, who only stands 170 centimetres high, and Schoolkate give Australia at least seven players in round two, joining Taylah Preston, Kim Birrell, Maya Joint, Alexei Popyrin and James Duckworth.<\/p>\n
Men’s sixth seed Alex de Minaur will have to wait another day to try to follow suit after more rain in New York wiped out the day-three night session.<\/p>\n
De Minaur did not even make it onto The Grandstand for his first-round clash with Italian qualifier Andrea Guerrieri.<\/p>\n
Injured Kokkinakis withdraws from US Open before hitting a ball<\/p>\n
Thanasi Kokkinakis concedes he may have contested his last US Open without even hitting a ball after the cursed star’s body failed him once again.<\/p>\n
Kokkinakis formally withdrew from the season’s last grand slam after being unable to take the court for his scheduled first-round clash with Spanish wonder boy Rafael Jodar because of an ankle sprain.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Thanasi Kokkinakis has pulled out of the year’s final grand slam. (Getty Images: NurPhoto\/Robert Szaniszlo)<\/p>\n
The Australian suffered his latest injury in Cincinnati two weeks ago and has been racing the clock to be fit for the Open ever since.<\/p>\n
He ran out of time and, after a decade battling endless back, shoulder, abdominal, knee and arm injuries, Kokkinakis admits he is losing patience.<\/p>\n
“It is a possibility for sure,” the 30-year-old told AAP when asked if his US Open career might be over.<\/p>\n
“I’m not going to say never. The thing is, I feel like the tennis part, I’ve still got a lot of good tennis left in me.<\/p>\n
“On the limited matches that I’ve played, I’ve shown that I’m more than good enough to still compete and then beat some good players.<\/p>\n
“But, to be honest, I’m sick of going into tournaments not feeling like I can do it physically and everyone asks me how my body is.”<\/p>\n
The 30-year-old used \u2014 or “wasted” \u2014 the fifth of nine injury-protected ranking entries available to him to make the US Open draw.<\/p>\n
The one-time Roger Federer slayer now plans on continuing his recovery and trying to be fully fit for the Australian summer.<\/p>\n
“I want to go into it being confident in myself and, if I do win, give myself a chance to back up and try and play again,” Kokkinakis said.<\/p>\n
“That’s always the thing. So it’s about feeling strong in myself.<\/p>\n
“I’ll definitely obviously give the next Aussie a crack and see where I’m at after that.”<\/p>\n
AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Diminutive Dane Sweeny and qualifier Tristan Schoolkate have stormed into the US Open second round to continue Australia’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":878453,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,61656,1806,1025,85,747,198652,1751],"class_list":["post-878452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-flushing-meadows","tag-grand-slam","tag-new-york","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-thanasi-kokkinakis","tag-us-open"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878452","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=878452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/878452\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/878453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=878452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=878452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=878452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}