Injury-cursed Kokkinakis retires at Roland-Garros, wants to play slams ‘one more time’

“I came into the match with a lot of doubts because I wanted to go out there and give it a crack, but I knew it didn’t feel right. It progressively got worse [during] the match. I felt like if I kept playing, something bad was really going to happen, so I’ll do some scans tomorrow. “I felt if I kept playing, that’s me probably out of Wimbledon, as well, and maybe even US Open, and something bad [would] happen. I’m trying to be optimistic.

I just want to play the slams one more time. That’s my goal.” Australia’s only other singles player in action on the day, James Duckworth, also exited in the second round, going down 6-1, 6-7 (5-7), 6-4, 7-5 to 27th-seeded Spanish prodigy Rafael Jodar in a competitive encounter. Kokkinakis revealed in an interview with this masthead in January how he opted to undergo radical surgery following last year’s Australian Open in a desperate bid to fix a problem that had plagued him for six years.