(Melbourne) Marina Stakusic and Liam Draxl won their respective qualifying matches on Thursday to secure their tickets to the main draw of the Australian Open tennis tournament.
Stakušić (127e) joins Leylah Annie Fernandez and Victoria Mboko in the Canadian women’s delegation, while Draxl, who will participate in a major tournament for the first time, joins Félix Auger-Aliassime, Gabriel Diallo and Denis Shapovalov on the men’s side.
Stakusic took advantage of the troubles in the service of Lin Zhu (163e) to win 7-5 and 6-4.
The Canadian, who defeated the Spaniard Nuria Parrizas-Diaz (261e) and the Serbian Teodora Kostovic (176e) during the first two rounds of qualifying, will be making his first appearance in the main draw of this major tournament. This will be her second Grand Slam appearance after being eliminated in the first round at Wimbledon in 2024.
To achieve this, Stakusic managed four breaks in the first set and two more in the second set. She gave herself eight break points. Zhu only won 49% of rallies when she had the balls in hand.
Stakusic herself lost her serve four times. She called a timeout to bring in a therapist after Zhu made it 3-2 in the first set.
After letting a first match point slip away, Stakusic ended the match in the next game. The duel lasted one hour 42 minutes.
Aged 32, Zhu occupied number 31e WTA rank in September 2023, but injuries to her elbow and hips caused her to miss several months of activities over the past two years. She was 493e in the world when she reached the fourth round of the National Bank Open last summer in Montreal.
Later, Draxl (145e) came from behind to defeat the American Mackenzie McDonald (113e) 3-6, 7-6 (2) and 6-2.
Draxl had previously had the ascendancy over the Australian Moerani Bouzige (467e) and the Ukrainian Vitaliy Sachko (166e).
He hit nine aces and took advantage of five of his eight break points.
