{"id":380064,"date":"2026-01-20T10:02:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T10:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/380064\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T10:02:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T10:02:09","slug":"joao-fonseca-knocked-out-of-australian-open-in-first-round-after-physical-struggles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/380064\/","title":{"rendered":"Joao Fonseca knocked out of Australian Open in first round after physical struggles"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Rising Brazilian star Joao Fonseca<\/a> was knocked out of the Australian Open<\/a> in the first round after struggling physically in defeat to American Eliot Spizzirri. <\/p>\n

Fonseca, the 28th seed, made his big breakthrough at last year\u2019s tournament as a qualifier as he defeated top-10 player Andrey Rublev<\/a>, but fell at the first hurdle on his return to Melbourne as Spizzirri claimed his first Australian Open win. <\/p>\n

The 19-year-old Fonseca struggled with his movement and took a medical timeout deep into the fourth set as Spizzirri, the world No 85, won 6-4 2-6 6-1 6-2. <\/p>\n

\"Fonseca<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

Fonseca receives treatment from a trainer during his four-set defeat (AP)<\/p>\n

Fonseca had been forced to miss warm-up tournaments in Brisbane and Adelaide due to a lower back injury, and did not look anywhere close his best as he played his first competitive match of the season. <\/p>\n

\u201cI wasn’t 100 per cent yet,\u201d Fonseca said afterwards. \u201cI will say I needed more time. Since beginning of Brisbane, I wasn’t playing, and then I came back, but slowly. Then I stopped again. So I was almost like 15 days without hitting 100 per cent or very intense.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fonseca had been a potential third-round opponent for defending champion Jannik Sinner, and was highlighted by Roger Federer before the tournament as one of the up-and-coming stars who could break into Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz\u2019s duopoly<\/a> of the sport. <\/p>\n

\u201cI just think he’s more a little bit like me in the sense he needs a little bit more time to work on his game,\u201d Federer said. <\/p>\n

\"USA's<\/p>\n

open image in gallery<\/p>\n

USA’s Eliot Spizzirri is congratulated by Brazil’s Joao Fonseca (AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cSimilar to Jannik, as well, to know when to dial back and when to unload his shots. Once he figures that out, obviously the sky’s the limit. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut obviously I think he’s truly one of the guys that can compete for the biggest wins.\u201d <\/p>\n

Fonseca tried to look at the positives despite a disappointing early exit. <\/p>\n

\u201cMy back is 100 per cent. I’m healthy again. I just needed time,\u201d he said. \u201cSo it was good to see how to deal with a five-set match and with the physique not 100 per cent. I was getting tired earlier. I needed rhythm.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it’s good to have those experience, to see your limits, to see how it can go. Yeah, I don’t regret a thing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380065,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-380064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-sports","tag-tennis","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}