The Paris Review

A Loss Like a Knife: The 2019 Australian Open

Our resident poet/tennis expert is back with some thoughts on the 2019 Australian Open. 

Stefanos Tsitsipas (left) and Danielle Collins (right)

The two most in-form players at the 2019 Australian open, Stefanos Tsitsipas and Danielle Collins, met their ends in the semifinals. That their final sets both ended with scorelines of 6-0 is remarkable. That these rising young stars were defeated is surprising. But here we are. Stefanos Tsitsipas, the twenty-year-old phenom from Athens, was turned away by Rafael Nadal, 2-6, 4-6, 0-6. And Danielle Collins, the twenty-five-year old former college champion from the University of Virginia, met the end of the road in the form of a 6-7(2), 0-6 defeat at the hands of Petra Kvitová.

Tsitsipas and Collins lost to the higher-ranked, grand-slam regaled, and far more experienced

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MOSAB ABU TOHA is a poet, short-story writer, and essayist. His second poetry book, Forest of Noise, is forthcoming from Knopf in fall 2024. REBECCA BENGAL is the author of Strange Hours. DEEPA BHASTHI is a writer and critic who translates Kannadalan

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