World No. 1 and top seed Novak Djokovic opened the defense of his Australian Open championship with a win Sunday, but 18-year-old Croatian Dino Prizmic made him work for it in Melbourne.
The Serbian, seeking his 25th major victory, needed just over four hours to defeat Prizmic 6-2, 6-7 (5), 6-3, 6-4 in his first main-draw appearance at a major.
Prizmic, a qualifier, led 3-2 and was up a break in the third set before Djokovic rattled off four wins in a row to capture the set, then took a 4-0 lead in the fourth to gain control.
It was the longest first-round match of Djokovic's storied career.
"He deserved every applause, every credit that he got tonight," Djokovic said of Prizmic following the match. "He's an amazing player, so mature for his age and he handled himself on the court incredibly well.
"This is his moment, honestly. It could easily have been his match as well. He was a break up in the third, he fought even though he was 0-4 and a break point down [in the fourth set]. He fought. He showed great mentality and resilience. He really made me run for my money tonight."
Djokovic owns a record 10 Australian Open titles and is 90-8 in Melbourne. This likely wasn't the opening-round test he was expecting.
"Obviously I struggled at many different moments tonight, but credit to him," the 36-year-old said. "Due to his incredible game plan, he just had an answer for everything. He was very physical."
Also escaping tough first-round tests were fifth-seeded Andrey Rublev of Russia and 12th-seeded Taylor Fritz, who needed five sets to advance to the second round.
Rublev took the first two sets against Thiago Seyboth Wild of Brazil, but squandered the lead and ultimately needed a tiebreaker to defeat Wild 7-5, 6-4, 3-6, 4-6, 7-6 (10-6) in three hours, 43 minutes. Wild fought off four match points.
Wild upset another Russian, Daniil Medvedev, in the first round at the French Open in 2023, and Rublev said he thought he was seeing a replay of that match.
"I started to have this feeling for sure it's going to happen to me," Rublev said. "Almost all the fifth set, every game at least one or two times I was thinking about what happened to Daniil because the fifth set I was inside completely panicking. But still I was serving really well on the fifth set. The serve helped me a lot because all the fifth set I think he didn't have any chances. All the games were 40/15 or 40/0. The only thing that helped me a lot."
As for Fritz, he rallied drom a 2-1 deficit to defeat Facundo Diaz Acosta of Argentina 4-6, 6-3, 3-6, 6-2, 6-4.
Fritz rolled his ankle early on and required medical attention but credited Diaz Acosta for pushing him to five sets. Because of the Argentine's aggressive returns, Fritz converted only 66% of his first serves into points.
"He was returning serves that I feel like nobody returns unless they full guess on it. He wasn't even picking sides," Fritz said. "I'm hitting bombs and spots on the lines, and he is putting the returns on the baseline. Honestly, I've never seen anything like that."
Other seeded players advancing to the second round were No. 4 Jannik Sinner of Italy and No. 17 Frances Tiafoe as well as No. 22 Francisco Cerundolo and No. 26 Sebastian Baez, both from Argentina.
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