“Unless I changed something? But I can’t even ask to see it.”
Foot mistakes can’t be replayed on screen like tight line calls can be.
Thompson during his second round match against Nuno Borges.Credit: Penny Stephens
“You can look at everything else, and then you have something like this, and you don’t even see what happened. I mean, the system fails half the time. We had to shut down the system twice. It’s not too much to ask.”
It was a swing that contributed to the overall derailment of the match after a gutsy first set that Thompson clinched in a tiebreak.
When Borges broke Thompson at 4-4 in the fourth serve of the set, the Australian dropped his racket in frustration. That just about summed up how the crowd – who were so fired up with hope at the start of the match – felt at ANZ Arena.
The crowd was raucous when Thompson entered the court, and even during the match the Aussie fans descended into chaos, with the combination of booze, sun and classic Aussie craziness making the stadium at times more of a circus marquee than a tennis match.
But the stadium was uncharacteristically quiet as Borges served for the match.
Ajla Tomljanovic of Australia forehands against Elena-Gabriela Ruse of Romania.Credit: Getty Images
It was one of Australia’s four losses as the night session got under way at Melbourne Park on Wednesday.
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Ajla Tomljanovic lost her match to Romanian Elena-Gabriela Ruse 6-4, 6-4 not long after Thompson’s defeat.
Tomljanovic staged a brief comeback at the start of the second set when she converted her opening break point of the match to make it 3-1, but a weak next service game that gave the break straight back was the beginning of the end.
Ruse hit twice as many winners as Tomljanovic (22-11) and committed three fewer unforced errors, so it was a huge victory to book just the second round of 32 at a Grand Slam.
Tomljanovic has not been at a major since the 2023 US Open at this stage.
On the plus side, the shoulder injury she apparently suffered in Adelaide a week before the Australian Open does not appear to have affected her campaign at Melbourne Park.
Earlier, Diana Shnaider defeated Talia Gibson 3-6, 7-5, 6-3, while Storm Hunter lost her match in straight sets to Hailey Baptise.
Gibson played a flawless first set where she was the best serve player and hit the ball beautifully. But the match slipped away from her as Shnaider – the more experienced of the two – took control.
Read more about our Australian Open coverage
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