{"id":27544,"date":"2025-11-21T20:22:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T09:22:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/?p=27544"},"modified":"2025-11-21T20:22:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T09:22:13","slug":"mccabe-stuns-hijikata-at-rain-hit-nsw-open","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/news\/2025\/11\/21\/mccabe-stuns-hijikata-at-rain-hit-nsw-open","title":{"rendered":"McCabe Stuns Hijikata at Rain-Hit NSW Open"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
When at home, James McCabe spends so long at Sydney Olympic Park\u2019s tennis centre you could also accuse him of sleeping there.<\/div>\n
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On Friday, he did.<\/div>\n
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Tucked in a little corner of the physio room, the hometown boy curled up and slept without a care in the world as the Perpetual NSW Open ground to a frustrating halt for more than three hours due to a weather delay. \u00a0<\/div>\n
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For how long, McCabe is not even sure.<\/div>\n
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\u201cI woke up and they were drying the courts,\u201d he said.<\/div>\n
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Locked in a tense first-set struggle with fellow Sydneysider and the tournament\u2019s second seed Rinky Hijikata, McCabe quickly found his groove upon the resumption and survived a couple of nervous moments in the second set to claim the biggest scalp on the men\u2019s side of the draw.<\/div>\n
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McCabe\u2019s 6-3, 7-5 win came a week after a scheduling nightmare when he was humbled in a first round clash against 16-year-old Cruz Hewitt in Brisbane only hours after he jumped off a plane from Taipei, where he was a Challenger semi-finalist.<\/div>\n
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If his fluro green shorts didn\u2019t catch the eye on a gloomy day of quarter-final action, then McCabe\u2019s shot-making certainly did.<\/div>\n
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Having missed a match point on Hijikata\u2019s serve at 5-3 in the second set, and then failing to serve the match out, McCabe\u2019s outrageous sliding one-handed backhand winner past an onrushing Hijikata sealed the decisive break. His group of friends were so close to the fence they could have high-fived him as it whistled down the line.<\/div>\n
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\u201cRinky and I have played a few times and we train a lot together, so it\u2019s always tough playing each other because we know what each want to do,\u201d McCabe said. \u201cIt could have gone either way, so I\u2019m just happy to get the win.<\/div>\n
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\u201cRinky is an amazing player and I\u2019m just grateful I got there.\u201d<\/div>\n
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McCabe, ranked 196 in the world before this week, will play his semi-final against Japanese surprise packet Hayato Matsuoka, who fought back to beat Tai Sach in three sets.<\/div>\n
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Ranked 483 in the world and having already swept past Bernard Tomic and Hewitt, Matsuoka continued his giant-killing run with a 4-6, 7-5, 6-1 victory on an outside court which was also subject to the weather delay.<\/div>\n
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The other men\u2019s semi-final on Saturday will feature James Duckworth and Jason Kubler, with Duckworth halting Dane Sweeny\u2019s incredible recent run with a 6-2, 6-3 win while Kubler stopped Bolt\u2019s winning sequence 7-5, 6-3.<\/div>\n
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On the women\u2019s side, top seed Kim Birrell and defending champion Emerson Jones took another step to a potential final after both eased to straight sets wins in the final eight.<\/div>\n
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Jones was the only winner of the four women\u2019s matches on Friday scheduled to play on an outdoor court and had to endure the lengthy break before returning to shade Elena Micic in the first set tiebreak to set up a 7-6(6), 6-2 win.<\/div>\n
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Birrell needed only 74 minutes to beat Taipei\u2019s Ya Yi Yang 6-3, 6-2.<\/div>\n
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The other women\u2019s semi-final will feature third seed Talia Gibson and Storm Hunter, who was forced to be on court for almost two hours in a narrow 7-5, 6-4 win over China\u2019s Fangran Tian.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

James McCabe shocked second seed Rinky Hijikata, booking his spot in the semi-finals. Jason Kubler ended Alex Bolt\u2019s winning run, while defending champion Emerson Jones eased through in straight sets to keep her title hopes alive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6323,"featured_media":27545,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6323"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}