Five quick hits — Kokkinakis wins five-set epic, Murray-Raducanu to make mixed doubles dream team, Medvedev gets score wrong — and wins anyway

Australia’s Thanasi Kokkinakis takes two days — and five sets — to get through to the second round, Britain gets a mixed doubles dream team and Daniil Medvedev sits down a point early in a tie-break. 

Here are five quick hits from day three at Wimbledon.

Thanasi Kokkinakis gets through first-round, finally, with epic five-set triumph

Thanasi Kokkinakis has pulled another of his epic five-set comeback wins out of the fire, recovering from four match points down to knock out 17th seed Felix Auger-Aliassime and transform a miserable, rainy day at Wimbledon for Australia.

After the fancied Jordan Thompson got knocked out tamely and Aleksandar Vukic felt the brilliance of champion Carlos Alcaraz in second-round defeats on Wednesday, Kokkinakis completed his two-day, first-round contest against one-time Canadian wonder boy Auger-Aliassime with a 4-6, 5-7, 7-6 (11-9), 6-4, 6-4 triumph.

It followed two similar epic five-set triumphs for Adelaide’s marathon man at the recent French Open, including a comeback from two sets down against Italian Giulio Zeppieri, and meant he’s now gone the distance in five of his six grand slam matches this year.

“I’d rather not [keep playing five-setters],” Kokkinakis said with a smile on court, to much laughter.

“It doesn’t help me going deeper into the tournament, that’s for sure. Thankfully, it is best-of-five, otherwise I wouldn’t have won many matches this year. 

“The beauty of five sets is it’s a rollercoaster, with lots of momentum swings. You just have to keep playing and see what happens.”

On a damp Tuesday night, the world number 93 had been on the brink of defeat in straight sets with the 17th-ranked Auger-Aliassime having held four match points in the tie-break for a straight-sets win.

But Kokkinakis edged the breaker, and after the match was postponed for the day at the start of the fourth, the Australian returned to take his chances on Wednesday on an outside court made slippery by the constant drizzle which twice further held up the match.

Earlier, recent Queen’s Club star Thompson just couldn’t cope with the excellence of American Brandon Nakashima, succumbing in three one-sided sets 6-3, 6-2, 6-2.

Fellow Sydneysider Vukic then followed up under the roof of No.1 Court, briefly offering the holder Alcaraz a scare, as he served for the first set on his showcourt debut.

However, the 21-year-old moved into an unstoppable higher gear to triumph 7-6 (7/5), 6-2, 6-2.

Raducanu relishing British dream team partnership with Murray

It took Emma Raducanu all of 10 seconds to jump at the “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to play mixed doubles with British hero Andy Murray in his farewell Wimbledon after the pair were awarded a wildcard by the organisers.

The dream pairing of the only British players to have won grand slam singles titles since 1977 came about after Murray pulled out from the men’s competition before his match with Tomas Machac a day earlier due to a back issue in the build-up to the grasscourt major.

The 37-year-old Murray, who will also be in action in men’s doubles with his brother Jamie when they face Australians Rinky Hijikata and John Peers in Thursday’s opener, belatedly added mixed doubles to his schedule and Raducanu grabbed the chance to partner him.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” former US Open champion Raducanu told reporters shortly after her 6-1, 6-2 win over Elise Mertens.

“I think Wimbledon is Andy Murray and Andy Murray is Wimbledon.

“For me, it was an honour to be asked. I just want to see him do well.”

Two-time Wimbledon singles champion Murray, who last played in the mixed doubles event in 2019 alongside American great Serena Williams and reached the third round, said he was relishing the chance to play with the 21-year-old Raducanu.

“We’d spoken about it a few years ago during the COVID year, but both of us ended up doing quite well in singles so it didn’t happen,” Murray said.

“And then yesterday I was chatting to my team, they were discussing mixed and last night I messaged her coach and said: ‘Look, do you think this is something maybe she’d be up for doing?’ He said it was worth asking.

ABC Sport will be live blogging every day of the Paris Olympics from July 27

“I asked her and she said she would be up for it. It should be fun. I’ve played mixed doubles a few times when I was young and then the last time was with Serena. I really enjoyed it, it’s something we rarely get to do.”

Raducanu may not boast a noteworthy doubles record but said she would give everything for her idol.

“Andy’s a hero to us all … I’m super-excited and hopefully I can learn a thing or to about coming to the net or something,” Raducanu said.

“I really don’t want to let him down. I’m going to be on my best form, trying hard. Probably be more nervous for that than the singles.”

Three-times grand slam champion Murray, who had hip-resurfacing surgery in 2019, previously said that he was unlikely to continue his career beyond this year and could bow out at the Paris Olympics.

The tennis competition at the Games will start on July 27.

Daniil Medvedev sits down early in tie-break, recovers to win in four

Daniil Medvedev has a reputation as being a little bit odd on the tennis court.

For a number of years he had a famous love-hate relationship with the US Open crowd, playing the pantomime villain to rev himself up during matches.

He’s capable of being very charming and relaxed when he’s feeling it, but he’s just as capable of blowing up and losing his form.

The Russian has never had a great time at Wimbledon — last year was the first time he’d made it past the fourth round when he reached the semifinal.

But this year he’s done the most Daniil Medvedev thing ever — he’s sat down a point early.

At the end of the first set of his match against Alexandre Muller, Medvedev appeared distracted and unhappy during the concluding tie-break.

After losing the ninth point, Medvedev sat down, gesturing at his coaches in the box on the other side as he thought he had lost the opening set.

Trouble was, it wasn’t actually over yet. 

A sheepish-looking Medvedev jumped up and ran back onto court, and promptly lost the next point to officially lose the set.

Luckily for the fifth seed, he recovered to win the next three sets 7-6 (7-4), 6-4, 7-5 to advance to the third round of the tournament.

Emma Navarro ends Naomi Osaka’s Wimbledon as Coco Gauff progresses

On the face of it American 19th seed Emma Navarro’s 6-4, 6-1 second round victory over a player ranked 113th in the world is a routine, even mundane result, worth little more than a footnote in the dispatches from SW19.

Except the player on the receiving end of what became a 58-minute hiding was Naomi Osaka, a four-time grand slam winner and one of the best-known players in the women’s game.

Osaka was world number one for 25 weeks in 2019, before Ash Barty made the spot her own, and was still only 23 when she won her second Australian Open title in 2021.

However, later that year, suffering mental health issues, she retired from the French Open, skipped Wimbledon, then lost early at the US Open. She took a break, returned to modest results, then took maternity leave in 2023.

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She is still only 26, but it is a long haul back to the top. Her enduring talent was evident at Roland Garros when she had match point against perennial winner Iga Swiatek, but she has never been comfortable on grass.

Despite strong support from the Centre Court crowd Osaka’s game disintegrated as soon as Navarro settled on her debut in the arena.

From 3-2 up Osaka won two of the next 12 games.

“Naomi didn’t do much wrong but she didn’t do much right either, too many errors and Navarro was on fire,” nine-times Wimbledon champion Martina Navratilova said while commentating.

Navarro will now play Russian 20-year-old Diana Shnaider, who also put a former US Open champion to the sword. She beat Sloane Stephens 6-1, 6-1.