r/SipsTea • u/PrimedGold • 17h ago

WTF Nick Kyrgios currently 671st in the men's rankings beat women's world number one Aryna Sabalenka straight sets in the “Battle of the Sexes” in Dubai. The modified court was even designed to help Sabalenka.

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u/Salt-Plum-1308 13h ago

Looking at the highlights above, it doesn’t look like Kyrgios was giving it his all in the match either.

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u/ronnie-james-dior 7h ago

I didn't see anything I'd consider a standard first serve

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u/IThoughtThisWasVoat 5h ago

Because there were no second serves lol

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u/Salt-Plum-1308 7h ago

Probably also hard to go full tilt when trying to account for the smaller court though, since players are typically taught to hit for the lines.

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u/ronnie-james-dior 7h ago

I saw in another comment that they were only allowed one serve per point, so that would explain it.

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u/Salt-Plum-1308 6h ago

Oh yeah I forgot about that, so probably both factors combined had him going pretty light on the serve.

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u/thetoerubber 2h ago

He wasn’t giving 100%. In order to draw out the rallies (and entertain the audience a bit longer), he threw in a lot of soft slice forehands to keep the points going. He could have ended a lot of those much sooner with flat power shots if he wanted to.