Popyrin vs Kokkinakis — a former champion back at the bottom of the ladder
Preview · National Bank Open, Montréal (ATP Masters 1000) · Qualifying first round · 1 August 2026
Two years ago Alexei Popyrin lifted this trophy. Today he is playing the first round of qualifying for it, against a compatriot whose career has been dismantled by injury. Two Australians who have both been considerably better than this, meeting at a point where neither can take anything for granted. Popyrin is seeded tenth, Kokkinakis is unseeded, and the winner is one match from the main draw.
The matchup
Popyrin is twenty-six and was ranked nineteenth in the world at his peak, a figure earned largely on the back of that Canadian Masters title, when a huge serve and a first strike off the forehand carried him past a succession of better-credentialled opponents. He has six career titles. He has also slid far enough down the list since that a Masters main draw is no longer his by right. Thanasi Kokkinakis is thirty, once a top-sixty singles player and a top-fifteen doubles player who has partnered Nick Kyrgios, and a man whose talent has never been the problem. Availability has. The two have met three times before, none of it this season.
Form & conditions
Popyrin’s 2026 has been grim by his own standards, with roughly twice as many losses as wins and a hard-court record that is the worst part of it — a return of two wins from around ten matches on the surface he built his ranking on. The season’s high points came on clay, of all things: he beat Matteo Berrettini and Jakub Menšík to reach the third round in Rome, and knocked out Taylor Fritz on the way to the Geneva quarter-finals. Since then it has been a first-round exit at Wimbledon and a trip to the Vancouver Challenger, which tells its own story about where he currently sits.
Kokkinakis has barely played at all. His entire season amounts to a handful of matches: a win over Sebastian Korda in Adelaide in January, a qualifying run in Zagreb, a five-set victory over Térence Atmane at Roland Garros that was followed by a retirement against Pablo Carreño Busta in the next round, and a Challenger win over Marcelo Tomás Barrios Vera in June. Nothing since, and his ranking has collapsed accordingly. He is fresh only in the sense that he is unworn.
The deciding factor
Match fitness against ball-striking. Kokkinakis at anything like full health still owns one of the biggest serves in this field and can end points from either wing, and quick Montréal conditions flatter that. But a player who has competed for perhaps a week and a half since early June, and who retired from his last completed event, is asking a great deal of his body. Popyrin’s problem is different and arguably more troubling: he has been losing to opponents he used to beat, and confidence off the ground has visibly gone.
The call
The lean is Popyrin, with low confidence. He has the fresher competitive miles and the bigger baseline platform, but a player in this kind of slump against a returning talent with nothing to lose is not a read anyone should hold tightly.
