Aussies Thompson and Kyrgios stun USA’s Sock and Isner

By Louise Belcourt
The home country Australia had a perfect start to day one of their Davis Cup quarter final clash against USA in Brisbane.
USA was sporting 4 players in the top 30, with Australia only having one in 16th ranked Kyrgios, with the Aussies pinning their hopes on the brash and entertaining young gun.
But it was Jack Sock who was left speechless, after his 6-3 3-6 7-6(4) 6-4 loss to Jordan Thompson. The 22 year old Aussie ranked 79 in the world was able to defend and then deflate the world number 15. No one expected Thompson to trouble the in-form Sock, although the rowdy Brisbane crowd were hopeful of a good fight, but he seemed to lift and fight for every point and turned defence into attack whenever he could.
Sock offered little reason for his demise in his press conference that lasted a mind blowing 1 minute and only 27 words, saying “He served well, made a lot of balls.”
Thompson spoke about the pressure of playing for his country “there’s a little bit of extra pressure, I guess, playing for the green and gold and seeing Lleyton on the sideline, but he’s there to help and, yeah, he knows that.”
Australian captain Lleyton Hewitt said of Thompson “I can tell that when I’m talking to him he’s engaged in the conversation, and on court, and that’s really important because then we’re on the same wavelength. And Thommo’s a great kid and he leaves his heart and soul out there. I’ve done a lot of hard work with him over the last, probably, six months or so, and it’s nice to see it paying off on him.”
Having lost the first rubber, the pressure then turned on American John Isner to try and tame the beast that is Nick Kyrgios. Isner had a winning 2-1 head-to-head against Kyrgios, but the Australian fans were confident of a win following the great form and composure he’s shown of late (most notably having only a week ago lost one of the matches of the year, against Federer in the semi-final of Miami).
Isner went down fighting in a tight 3 setter 7-5 7-6(5) 7-6(5). Starting slowly Kyrgios lost the first 3 games but fought back to win the set and the hearts of the crowd. After some astonishing groundstrokes and serving from both players, Kyrgios was able to come back from mini-breaks down in both tiebreakers to win the match. Kyrgios returned one of the best servers in the game with ease, and he himself served probably better than his 6 foot 10” opponent.
World number 23, Isner said of the match “I felt like I played well enough to have beaten a lot of people out there today, but not Nick; I thought he played pretty well and came up clutch at the end and he certainly deserved to win. As you mentioned, those two returns at 5:4 and 5-all, were pretty high-quality and he did it and, you know, it was good play.”
Of having Hewitt in his corner Kyrgios said “he just tells me to back myself. ‘Just keep going’ he said. ‘You’ll get your chances, just keep competing for every point’. And he knows best, so that’s what I did and I got the win.”
So Jim Courier’s team is looking down the barrel of defeat, but he was not giving up saying “We’ve been here before, we’ve been up 2:0 and ended up losing and we rallied. So we know that it takes three, and tomorrow’s a new day. We’re certainly not happy with the scoreboard, by any means, but we’re professionals and we’ll be ready to play come tomorrow.”
So can the greatest Davis cup winning country, USA, turn this devastating start around, or will the second most successful country, Australia, reach the semi-final of the Davis Cup?

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