An elated Kim Birrell plans on paying down her mortgage after surviving a match point and a restless night\u2019s sleep to chalk up a life-changing US Open win in New York.<\/p>\n
The gritty Gold Coaster wore down Croatian Petra Marcinko 3-6, 7-6 (7-4), 6-3 to finally reach the second round after losing all three of her previous Flushing Meadows openers in 2023, 2024 and 2025.<\/p>\n
Young gun Maya Joint and veteran James Duckworth also advanced on a banner day two for the Australian contingent.<\/p>\n
Joint rallied to take out higher-ranked Russian Liudmila Samsonova 3-6, 6-2, 6-2 to continue her revival after a horror start to 2026, while Duckworth notched a mighty 5-7, 6-3, 6-2, 7-6 (10-8) comeback victory over 2026 French Open semi-finalist Matteo Arnaldi, the men\u2019s 30th seed.<\/p>\n
But a beaming Birrell stole the day in burying her first-round hoodoo after being forced to return to Court 7 following a nervy 14-hour rain delay.<\/p>\n
\u201cI woke up around 5am, like wide awake, ready to step out on court and my alarm wasn\u2019t for a few more hours,\u201d she said. \u201cSo I had to calm myself back down, and try to clear my mind and then managed to get back to sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n
After fending off her match point in the 12th game of the second set on Sunday, the 28-year-old was still trailing by a set and a mini break in the second-set tiebreaker before rallying to post one of the most satisfying wins of her career.<\/p>\n
Birrell had lost in straight sets to Marcinko on grass at Eastbourne two months ago, having dropped the opening set 6-0 in their first meeting in February, which Birrell won in Texas.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s crazy,\u201d Birrell told AAP after earning a guaranteed pay day of $US190,000 ($A265,000) \u2013 or more if she topples Russian world No 19 Ekaterina Alexandrova next up.<\/p>\n
Birrell and coach Matt Fraser are wedding planning for their upcoming big day in Kingscliff and said the massive cheque will go nicely on their honeymoon.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh my gosh, I don\u2019t think I\u2019ll be spending it here,\u201d Birrell said. \u201cI\u2019ll definitely save some of it. We\u2019re getting married at the end of the year so that helps a lot and maybe I\u2019ll buy some extra flowers.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd we\u2019ve got a mortgage. Yeah, the mortgage.\u201d<\/p>\n
Birrell is also slated to soar 16 spots to a career-high world No 55, displacing Talia Gibson as Australia\u2019s new No 1.<\/p>\n
Birrell, Joint and Duckworth follow WA rising star Taylah Preston in progressing.<\/p>\n
Turning 35 in January, Duckworth has finally reached round two at all four grand slams and next faces China\u2019s Yibing Wu for a place in the last 32.<\/p>\n
Joint had lost 13 of 14 matches since January before starting to turn her season around during the American hardcourt swing. Now the 20-year-old has earned a crack at ninth seed Elina Svitolina.<\/p>\n
While the quartet marched on, Aleksandar Vukic was unable to win his weather-delayed epic against Rei Sakamoto, eventually losing 6-4 6-7 (5-7) 6-4 3-6 6-4.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An elated Kim Birrell plans on paying down her mortgage after surviving a match point and a restless…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":756368,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[101,118,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-756367","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\/756367","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=756367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/756368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=756367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=756367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=756367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}