AO Day 12 - Fantastic finals await; Djokovic deals with Dad’s controversy
The Tennis Podcast
David Law
4.5 • 2.6K Ratings
🗓️ 27 January 2023
⏱️ 61 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Catherine, David and Matt react to the men's semi-finals which saw Stefanos Tsitsipas beat Karen Khachanov to reach a first Australian Open final and Novak Djokovic beat Tommy Paul to reach a tenth.
We discuss the way in which Djokovic still won without his best tennis, how he dealt in press with the controversy surrounding his father and how he made his position clear on the war, the spectacular sight that was Tsitsipas' forehand, and how much their history against one another will affect the outcome on Sunday.
We also look ahead to the women's final between Elena Rybakina and Aryna Sabalenka. How on earth are we supposed to predict what might happen between two such in form players? And what could make the difference?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, this is Billie Jean King. This is Mary and Bartoli. |
| 0:03.1 | I'm Matt's Belander. This is Mary Carillo. This is Pam Shriver. |
| 0:06.4 | This is Yannick Noah and you're listening to the tennis podcast. |
| 0:20.4 | Well it's 21 minutes pause midnight here at tennis podcast Towers and we are on the eve of the |
| 0:28.1 | final weekend of the 2023 Australian Open. We know who our men's singles finalists will be |
| 0:38.4 | and it will be a 13th career meeting between Novak Djokovic and Stefanos Sitepas for the second time |
| 0:46.7 | in their meetings. A major title will be on the line and for the first time the world number one |
| 0:52.8 | ranking will also be on the line. David's here. |
| 0:58.2 | Yeah, that sounds great when you line it up like that and even though it's so many meetings and |
| 1:05.1 | yet one sided it doesn't feel that one sided going into this one. |
| 1:09.1 | Hey, on your the guy that thinks rankings mean nothing anymore. I was expecting you to poo poo |
| 1:16.2 | my big set up. I remember doing that during around the US Open last year when the same |
| 1:22.4 | situation happened and a match made the point well at least the winner does become world number one |
| 1:28.0 | and you can't argue with that in terms of at least it being on the line. I still don't think it's |
| 1:33.9 | that bigger deal versus the Grand Slam tournament that is on the line. I think it's a massive |
| 1:41.1 | deal to Stefanos Sitepas in his eyes. We've talked about that before haven't we? |
| 1:45.3 | Yeah, well I remember the last time he had the possibility of reaching world number one |
| 1:49.4 | was in Turin last year at the Nito ATP finals and it was an outside shot he needed to win all of his |
| 1:56.0 | matches and hope that other results aligned for him. It felt highly improbable to me but I |
| 2:02.8 | I still threw in a question about it on media day before the tournament and he made it |
| 2:08.6 | abundantly clear that it was top of mind for him. And this is so much better that it's like this. |
| 2:14.1 | Absolutely. This is how you want him to get there. Absolutely. Matt here. Hello Matt. |
... |
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