Spizzirri acknowledges 'funny timing' but accepts Australian Open heat rules after loss to Sinner

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — He knew the extreme heat rule would come into play whether or not he broke Jannik Sinner's serve Saturday in the third game of the third set.

Eliot Spizzirri went ahead and broke the two-time defending champion 's serve anyway, taking confidence and momentum into an eight-minute break while the roof closed over the Australian Open's main stadium.

After the interruption, momentum swung completely. Sinner, staggering with cramps and completely distracted before the interval, regained his composure while the roof was closing and again in a 10-minute “cooling break” before the fourth set.

Sinner won it 4-6, 6-3, 6-4, 6-4 and advanced to the round of 16, later admitting he might have got lucky with the timing of the heat rule. The timing of the roof closure generated plenty of backlash on social media.

But Spizzirri took a very matter-of-fact approach to his defeat.

“Yeah, I don’t know if he got saved by it,” the 24-year-old American said. "I smiled a little bit when the heat rule went into effect, just because it was kind of funny timing as I went up 3-1. But at the same time, you know, the game at 2-1 in the third set was when the heat (scale) hit 5.0.

“So whenever that game was over, whether I broke or whether he held, we were going to close the roof. It was just funny that right when I broke and he was wobbling, that it happened to happen that way.”

Rules are rules

“That’s the rules of the game,” he said. “And, you know, you got to live with it.”

Sinner made a recovery under similar circumstances against Holger Rune at a previous Australian Open, and Spizzirri said obviously the world's No. 2-ranked player had worked out ways to combat his cramps.

Spizzirri played college tennis in Texas, and said conditions he'd experienced in Austin and in other places like Florida were worse than Saturday's dry, hot day in Melbourne.

On the men's tour, he'd said he'd played in China last year where the court temperature reached 123 degrees Fahrenheit (51 Celsius).

“I don’t think it was even ballpark close to that today,” said Spizzirri, who made his main draw debut at Melbourne Park this year. “So, yeah, I felt pretty fresh, to be honest, and felt like I could have gone a lot longer.”

The temperature was around 35 degrees Celsius (95 Fahrenheit) when the tournament’s heat scale hit a maximum of 5. The maximum Saturday didn’t quite hit the forecast of 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit).

While he said he was conditioned to play in extreme heat, Spizzirri accepted that the tournaments had to apply rules for player protection.

“I’ve played in way worse conditions. I’ve trained in way worse conditions. In college we played in brutal conditions at times in Austin,” he said. "Maybe that’s just a good thing to have under my belt.

“But at the same time, this rule is protection for us. I think it will hopefully promote guys to stay healthier for a longer period of time throughout the season, because playing these matches in this heat for an extended period of time over and over, day after day, is really tough on the body.”

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