Tennis Today: A 1,000km journey, a ‘petulant’ press conference and ‘ugly’ blisters

Shahida Jacobs
May 29, 2018

In Tennis Today, it’s a mixed bag featuring Marco Trungelliti and Bernard Tomic.

What’s on the site
It’s all about the French Open on Tennis365 this week. On the back of Jelena Ostapenko’s exit, we look at Top 10 French Open shocks, featuring Andre Agassi’s defeat to someone who was afraid of flying and was coached by his wife.

Defending champion Rafael Nadal was held up by rain on Monday, but his coach Carlos Moya says he is in a good space mentally and physically as he goes in search of title No 11 at Roland Garros.

Results round-up:
ATP French Open report one
ATP French Open report two
WTA French Open report one
WTA French Open report two

Then do check out our gallery from day two at the French Open.

And some more news as 12-time Grand Slam winner Novak Djokovic wants to follow in Juan Martin del Potro’s footsteps.

Then we also have the latest on Stan Wawrinka’s rankings blow following his defeat on Monday.

What’s in the news
The story of the 2018 French Open belongs to Marco Trungelliti so far after the Argentine took a nine-hour, 1000-kilometre drive from Barcelona to Paris to compete on day one. And he ended up beating Bernard Tomic.

If that doesn’t make you smile, then how about this? His brother, mother and 88-year-old grandmother took the trip with him.

“We needed grandma for sure. My grandma was actually in the shower. I told her: ‘OK, we go to Paris,'” reports The Independent.

Naturally Tomic was not in a happy mood after his defeat to lucky loser Trungelliti and the Herald Sun, via news.com.au, goes with “Bernard Tomic delivers petulant press conference after French Open exit”.

They have a full transcript of his 64-word press conference.

From petulant we go to cool and awkward. Naomi Osaka was named the “coolest thing in tennis” by GQ Magazine on the back of her success at Indian Wells earlier this year.

But when asked about it after her first-round match at the French Open, the Japanese star replied: “I think if they wanted to title it something, they should have titled it the ‘most awkward person in tennis’.”

Kateryna Kozlova made headlines on Sunday as she beat defending champion Ostapenko and she did it despite blisters. Express Sport has the story on her “gruesome” and “ugly” blisters.

Serena Williams returns to Grand Slam tennis today and debate about the French Open’s decision not to seed her continues with Victoria Azarenka insisting “the rule should be for everybody” and not just the American, reports The Metro.

What’s on social media
If you read ‘what’s in the news’, then you will know the Marco Trungelliti story, but here’s another interesting twist to the fairytale.

The story gets even crazier: there were THREE Barcelona-to-Paris flights cancelled yesterday evening. So if Trungelliti hadn’t gone by car, he probably wouldn’t have made it here. #RG18 pic.twitter.com/ca9p85IYDo

— Ben Rothenberg (@BenRothenberg) May 28, 2018

Just Lucas Pouille, Pablo Carreno Busta Alexander Zverev, Diego Schwartzman, Juan Martin del Potro and David Ferrer doing a commercial.

Who said tennis can’t be taken outside the court.. We did it to catch a #SUVPeugeot5008! @DriveToTennis #NEXTisHERE

A post shared by Alexander Zverev (@alexzverev123) on May 26, 2018 at 12:30pm PDT