Later, in his post-match media conference, Sinner further touched on his “luck” after also dodging a bullet against Rune last year as he struggled in the heat, shivering and shivering in grueling scenes, even though the temperature was noticeably cooler.
“I try to stay calm even at a time like this,” Sinner said of Saturday’s events. “If he keeps playing the way he’s been playing, maybe I’ve dropped a little bit, maybe my tournament is over today. I don’t know.”
His inferior opponent was more generous.
“I don’t know if he. [Sinner] it saved me,” Spizzirri said.
“I kind of smiled when the run-up rule went into effect, just because it was kind of funny timing when I went up 3-1, but at the same time, you know, the game at 2-1 in the third set was when the heat hit, I think it was 5.0.” [on the tournament’s heat stress scale]which means the rule of heat applies.
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“It was funny that just when I broke and he was swinging, it happened.
“But at the same time, it’s the rules of the game and you have to live with it.
Regardless, as Sinner “wobbled”, his team knew the danger of the moment. His Australian coach Darren Cahill took advantage of the proximity of the coaching pods on the court, saying: “You have to get over the third team-mate, even if you just walk, don’t worry.”
As Sinner convulsed even more, reeling from a 20-point run in a game that saw the Italian lose serve and fall 1-3 behind, referee chairman Fergus Murphy announced the tournament was implementing the final phase of its heat policy: suspending play on outdoor courts and closing the roof on stadium courts.
The timing couldn’t have been better for Sinner and no worse for Spizzirri.
On TV commentary, Australian great Todd Woodbridge said Sinner could “thank his lucky stars”.
“Who knows what could have happened if the game had gone on for another 10-15 minutes in the third set,” Woodbridge, the owner of the masthead, said on Nine.
“He can thank his lucky stars that the heat kept rising and he had the opportunity to get off the court and get some treatment, get that fluid, the cucumber juice to combat those cramps.”
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Later, however, Sinner was not so desperate to find an answer to the conditioning questions.
“I feel like, you know, sometimes there’s no… no real explanations,” he said. “Sometimes there’s this night, for example, when I didn’t sleep… the way I wanted to.
“The sleep quality wasn’t perfect. Maybe it was that, maybe it wasn’t. I was trying to be in the best shape possible every day, every day he was recovering, everything was going in the right direction.”
“I know my body a little bit better now and hopefully it will go away slowly, which, you know, it did today with the rules.”
Sinner confirmed that he was unable to receive off-field treatment during the stoppage, when the roof was closed, which lasted about 15 minutes. Instead, it took him several minutes to lie down.
“I was alone – there was no treatment,” he said. “You can’t heal at that time. So I was, you know, stretching myself.”
“I lay there for five minutes and [was] trying to relax the muscles. And it worked really well… To try and get the body temperature down a little bit, you know, and it’s—the time went by pretty, pretty quickly.’
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