Most players spend the last few days before a Grand Slam hitting the practice courts and putting the finishing touches to their games ahead of their opening matches. 

Not Thanasi Kokkinakis. 

After nearly a year and a half on the sidelines recovering from a radical and unprecedented pectoral attachment surgery, he barely hit a ball in the three days prior to his Roland-Garros opener because he was too scared to tweak something that would dash his hopes of playing his first Grand Slam singles match since the 2025 Australian Open. 

“I’m just like, I want to get to the starting line 100 percent and then see what happens. It’s weird going into a match and just thinking, ‘The opponent is the afterthought,’” said the 30-year-old Aussie. 

For Kokkinakis, everything besides his right arm and pec is an afterthought. 

After a decade-long battle with various injuries, Kokkinakis underwent a surgery so far-fetched, even Rafael Nadal’s doctor looked at it and was like, “I’ve never seen this before.”

Kokkinakis had been playing with bald scar tissue in his pectoral area for more than five years and had seen dozens of doctors to no avail. 

Eventually, a surgeon in Melbourne, Dr. Greg Hoy, suggested a revolutionary procedure that involved using a dead person’s Achilles tendon as a graft to attach Kokkinakis’ pec to his shoulder. 

Kokkinakis had the surgery in February 2025 and spent the majority of the past 15 months trying to get himself in a position to contest a best-of-five match. 

He said his arm is the first thing he thinks of when he wakes up in the morning, and that it’s something that consumes his life.

“There were many months where it wasn’t normal,” he reflected. 

“There’s some things that I couldn’t do for a while. I couldn’t lift my arm over to the side. I had to get my mate to floss my armpit after I had a shower to dry that off for a long period of time because of the surgery that I had. So, yeah, it’s pretty tricky.

“I’ve got a big scar there. I haven’t really shown it too much, but it looks like a shark bite. Yeah, it’s just different. It’s something that I’ve kind of gotten used to. And that’s my new normal. So I’m just trying to adjust with it.”

Kokkinakis tried to return for the Aussie summer in January but hurt his shoulder during a first-round victory over Sebastian Korda at his home tournament in Adelaide. 

Beating a player of Korda’s caliber after being 11 months out of the game and having half of your pec cut off is something worth celebrating. But as has been the case for the majority of Kokkinakis’ career, a flash of brilliance often came with a heartbreaking setback. He wouldn’t play another match until a Challenger in Zagreb earlier this month, where he won two qualifying matches, then pulled out ahead of his main-draw opener. 

But then came Roland-Garros—a tournament that had featured some of his fiercest battles. 

There was a five-set win over fellow Aussie Bernard Tomic back in 2015 that sent Kokkinakis into a Grand Slam third round for the first time. A marathon victory over Stan Wawrinka in 2023. Three grueling five-setters in 2024, including a tight loss to a 12th-ranked Taylor Fritz. 

When Kokkinakis drew home favorite Terence Atmane in the first round this week, he immediately thought of those epic moments and wanted to relive them once again on Paris’ terre battue. 

“I’ve had some absolute wars, especially on that Simonne-Mathieu court. And these are things you can’t replicate when you’re done with tennis. So as long as I can milk it as much as I can, you can’t replicate those energies, not just at French Open, but all the Slams,” he said.

Kokkinakis got himself to the starting line on Monday but was admittedly worried about whether his arm would hold up. 

“Even a few days ago there were talks that I wasn’t sure if I’d play. I had some people flying in, and I told them to stay home, because I didn’t want to play a few games and have something go bad, to be honest,” he revealed. 

“I was very scared, very nervous to go out there, but yeah, when I got going, I just played on energy.”

Out on Court 6, in sweltering 30-plus-degree weather, and with a rowdy French crowd rooting for his opponent, Kokkinakis’ arm did more than hold up. 

It lasted four hours and 18 minutes, earned him 24 aces, and helped him claw his way back from 2–5 down in the fifth set to defeat the world No. 52 and post just his fifth tour-level victory in 17 months. 

Word had spread that a dramatic match was unfolding, and suddenly hundreds of fans left Court Philippe-Chatrier and packed its surrounding balconies overlooking Court 6 to get a glimpse of the action. 

It’s the kind of atmosphere Kokkinakis had been dreaming about, and the caption of his Instagram post after the match was succinct but said it all. 

“Worth the wait,” Kokkinakis wrote, with a photo of him lying on his back on the boiling-hot clay, celebrating his victory. 

“I think to come back after such little tennis on a Grand Slam stage and in these conditions, against a good player from France as well, it’s probably my best mental effort considering where I was,” he told reporters after the win. 

“For me it’s the little wins and the small victories and stuff like today where that’s the reason I kept trying to come back from these injuries, to have moments like that on court, because I know when I’m retired, nothing will really compare to that.”

Kokkinakis was still on a high during his press conference but was under no illusion that life was suddenly all rainbows and butterflies. 

A year ago, he had started taking commentating jobs and was pondering his future post-tennis. One win at a major wasn’t going to magically erase his physical reality. 

It’s why Kokkinakis was quick to note that he wasn’t looking too far ahead, with his second round against Pablo Carreno Busta on Wednesday barely on his radar.

“I’m looking at tomorrow morning and seeing how I’ll wake up,” he said. 

“I just have confidently said that I’ve done everything I can, and if it’s not enough, it’s not enough. 

“I said to my team, I’m going to play until the Aussie Open next year. If stuff is not going well and my arm doesn’t feel great, then that will probably be it for me. 

“Days like today give me a lot of hope that that’s probably not going to be it, and I can keep pushing.” 

Here’s hoping he shows up for round 2 in Paris.