Felix Auger-Aliassime defeated Francisco Cerundolo in a four-set match and advanced to the fourth round of the 2023 Australian Open.
The Netflix curse took a new victim with the defeat of the Greek Maria Sakkari, and now the Canadian is the only tennis player who participate in the show and managed to reach the fourth round of the first Grand Slam of the season.
“My girlfriend showed me today”. “I wasn’t aware. I was aware that player were losing, I’d see player were losing, but it didn’t cross my mind until, yeah, she showed me the thing this morning”.
There were doubts about the performance that Felix Auger-Aliassime would have in Australia, after his early defeat at the ATP 250 in Adelaide 1 against the Aussie local Alexei Popyrin. But in the Australian Open he already drops out his compatriot Vasek Pospisil, the 25-year-old Slovak Alex Molcan (after a comeback from two sets down) and the South American Cerundolo in four sets.
However, he played it down the “curse” : “I thought it was funny. I don’t know. I don’t think it’s connected. I don’t know. Maybe the players that lost, maybe they do feel like it’s connected somehow.”
Netflix has already used his Twitter account to refer to the supposed curse, and shared a photo of the players who were part of the documentary: "To clarify: this is purely a coincidence..."
On the women's side, the only player left in the tournament was sixth seed Maria Sakkari, but she was defeated in the third round by 28-year-old Lin Zhu, in a tough three-set match (7-6, 1-6, 6-4 for the Chinese).
The Canadian sixth seed will now face the Czech Jiri Lehecka, who defeat the 11th seed Cameron Norrie, to reach a place in the last 8 of the tournament.