Jannik Sinner survived a scare during his first round match at Wimbledon, but he still managed to secure his place in the second round of the competition.
Sinner needed five sets to defeat Miomir Kecmanovic on Centre Court, in a match which saw him take a tumble and bleed through his own trainer.
The Italian looked out-of-sorts in his first competitive match since Roland Garros, but he eventually grew into the match and picked up the win.
While Sinner impressed with his serving ability, he hit a series of uncharacteristic unforced errors throughout the match, which surprised Andy Roddick.
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Speaking on Served, the American said: “51 errors. He was missing a lot, and his misses weren’t by three inches. They were by, like, four or five feet. I was stunned.
“And Kecmanovic, one, the guy’s been… Kecmanovic has been in the fourth round here, three out of four years, and the people he’s lost to: Djokovic, Djokovic, Sinner, and now Sinner.
“So he can play on grass, short take-backs, can accept pace pretty well, but he was beating Jannik kind of just playing through the middle, which is normally a recipe for disaster.
“Like, I would have never, ever, ever mentioned that as a possibility for him, and it was working, but it was working because there was some relief. Jannik was missing some today, right? He had 14 errors in the first set. Just there. So scratchy.”
However, Roddick then defended Sinner from others criticism of him.
“Let’s think about this, also. When you win as much as he does, he was on a 30-match winning streak before Roland Garros, by the way. Like, we forget about that a little too quickly.
“A month plus between matches for him is like an off-season. The only time he goes a month without playing matches because he wins as much as he does is like, finals of Turin into Australia, which is like six or seven weeks, right? So there is going to be some rust.”
Roddick also believes critics need to stop talking about the weather whenever they speak about Sinner’s chances of winning Wimbledon.
“He was always going to be a little rusty, and when so much of the narrative about him coming into this tournament is heat, heat, heat, heat, heat… no one talks about his game ever anymore,” he said.
“It’s all heat, heat, heat. There’s never been more interest in the forecast nine days from now in the history of tennis.”
Sinner will next play Nuno Borges has he looks to continue his Wimbledon title defence.
