“Come on, Than,” someone shouted from the crowd as Novak Djokovic was two points from victory on Centre Court here on Wednesday. “Make him work for it.” Thanasi Kokkinakis, who had been doing his best to get the six-times champion to break sweat for the last two hours, could only smile, shrug and ruefully shake his head.
To stand any chance against the No 1 seed Kokkinakis needed to get his big first serve up and running from the start. Instead, he kicked off with a double fault and went on to lose the game, and by the time he found some consistency on first serve, his opponent had already started to send quite a few back with interest.
