Why are you doing well in your mid-30s? Because I started drinking tequila.”These are the words of Adrian Mannarino (19th, France), who advanced to the round of 16 of the men’s singles at the Australian Open tennis tournament.Mannarino defeated Ben Shelton (16th, USA) 3-2 (7-6 <7-4> 1-6 6-7) after a close match lasting 4 hours and 5 minutes in the third round of the Australian Open tennis men’s singles held in Melbourne, Australia on the 19th. <2-7> 6-3 6-4) and advanced to the round of 16.Mannarino, born in 1988, is in his mid-30s, but showed off his stamina by winning the first to third rounds of this tournament in five close sets.
Shelton, the third round opponent, was born in 2002 and was an energetic player who was 14 years younger than Mannarino.Then, in an on-court interview after the game, the host asked Mannarino why he was doing better in his mid-30s.Mannarino has won five singles titles on the Men’s Professional Tennis (ATP) Tour, three of which came last year, and he achieved his first win in 2019 at the age of 31.In response to this question, Mannarino joked, “I started drinking tequila,” and then added, “Sometimes I need to forget past memories, and tequila helped me a lot. Instead of looking back at the past, I just thought about the future.” He said this, causing laughter in the audience.
In major tournaments, a total of 256 players (128 in men’s and women’s singles) participate, and in major games, the winning player is interviewed directly in front of the audience, so witty answers like Mannarino’s often make fans cry and laugh.Sumit Nagal (137th place, India), who passed the first round of men’s singles, said, “At the beginning of last year, I only had 900 euros (about 1.3 million won) in my bank account,” and added, “There were no tournaments to participate in, so I had to get a wild card to enter the tournament. “I was able to run,” he said, looking back on the difficult times.Nagal, who competed in this tournament from the preliminaries, failed to advance to the third round of the singles finals, but received 180,000 Australian 스포츠토토존 dollars in prize money and 150 million won in Korean money for the second round.