{"id":19985,"date":"2024-08-30T15:40:21","date_gmt":"2024-08-30T07:40:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/?p=19985"},"modified":"2024-08-30T15:46:18","modified_gmt":"2024-08-30T07:46:18","slug":"schoolkate-buoyed-by-career-best-slam-run","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/news\/2024\/08\/30\/schoolkate-buoyed-by-career-best-slam-run","title":{"rendered":"Schoolkate Buoyed by Career-Best Slam Run"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just one point away from reaching the third round of the US Open before losing to Jakub Mensik, Tristan Schoolkate departs New York proud of his efforts and motivated for more.<\/strong><\/p>\n

With a bit of distance between his second-round US Open loss and his subsequent media appearance, Tristan Schoolkate spoke with remarkable clarity about his journey in New York.<\/p>\n

The 23-year-old from Western Australia had never competed in the main draw of a Grand Slam until this week, nor even contested Slam qualifying outside of Australia.<\/p>\n

The last time he visited Flushing Meadows was for the junior tournament, five years ago.<\/p>\n

But in the first two five-set matches of his career, he stunned the experienced Taro Daniel after trailing two-sets-to-love in round one, and came within a point of the third round before Jakub Mensik proved too tough.<\/p>\n

Having recovered, stretched and showered, Schoolkate discussed what had unfolded on Court 12 against Mensik, a rapidly improving Czech teenager.<\/p>\n

Schoolkate won the first two sets, led 3-1 in the fourth \u2013 a set during which he earned two match points \u2013 and was also up an early break in the fifth, before going down 6-7(4) 2-6 6-2 7-6(5) 7-6[10-3].<\/p>\n

He admitted Thursday night\u2019s loss stung, but he could see the bigger picture.<\/p>\n

\u201cFantastic. It\u2019s a great first experience I think for me,\u201d replied Schoolkate, when asked to summarise his first Grand Slam main-draw campaign.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to compete my hardest, try my best and leave it all out there on the court, whatever round that the tournament finished, whether it was the first round or the final.<\/p>\n

\u201cI enjoyed my time on the court. I spent a fair bit of time on court in two matches, and physically I feel good right now.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt obviously sucks to go down today, but I\u2019m very happy with my efforts and proud of how far I came, and how hard I tried.\u201d<\/p>\n

He harboured few regrets about the missed match points, which were on Mensik\u2019s serve and which the Czech saved with composed, purposeful play.<\/p>\n

On paper, Schoolkate \u2013 currently ranked 193rd \u2013 was never favoured against a player who in 2024 has soared more than 100 places to peak at world No.64.<\/p>\n

\u201cCredit to him; he\u2019s obviously a good tennis player and he played those points very well and has a pretty good head on his shoulders for his age,\u201d said Schoolkate of Mensik, who reached the ATP Doha final in February.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s good to know that not only I can match these players with their tennis level, but physically I\u2019m very proud of where I\u2019m at. (At) 23 I feel like I\u2019m in pretty good shape; I\u2019ve played for nearly four hours in the first round and over four hours in the second round, and yeah, if I had to play again in two days, I\u2019m sure I could go four hours or more again.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I think that\u2019s a big positive, it gives me confidence. It\u2019s just a matter of backing it up week in, week out, and getting some wins on the Challenger Tour and trying to get onto the ATP Tour and consistently play these guys. Because it\u2019s a lot of fun to play against these guys, it\u2019s great to test yourself.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy ranking is a little bit off the mark for these tournaments, but I look forward to getting the opportunity to play these guys hopefully in the future, and yeah, it\u2019s exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schoolkate has risen to 164th in the ATP live rankings, another step towards making more of these opportunities possible.
\nAs for what comes next, Schoolkate revealed it felt a little like a whirlwind.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously it\u2019s a pretty crazy sport, tennis. Like, a couple of hours ago I had a match point and now I\u2019ve come off the court a loser,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I\u2019ve got to then look at flights back to Australia. I\u2019ve got to then figure out my next 24 hours. A lot of people don\u2019t see that stuff.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s nice, I\u2019ve got obviously plenty of messages of support and commiserations from home, but plenty of hate messages too, and people telling me how bad I am and I should quit and all these things.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it\u2019s just a bit of a busy time to figure out my plans, but I\u2019ll head back to Australia pretty soon and reflect on the past week, the past few matches that I\u2019ve had.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd yeah, look forward to getting back on the practice court and keep working to do better.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just one point away from reaching the third round of the US Open before losing to Jakub Mensik, Tristan Schoolkate departs New York proud of his efforts and motivated for more. With a bit of distance between his second-round US Open loss and his subsequent media appearance, Tristan Schoolkate spoke with remarkable clarity about his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6359,"featured_media":19986,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6359"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19985\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/wa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}