Thanasi Kokkinakis talks time off from Tour as he prepares to rock Adelaide main stage | ATP tour | Tennis

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‘DJ Kokkinakis’ talks time off from Tour as he prepares to headline Adelaide main stage

The Australian will face Korda in his first tour-level singles match in 12 months
January 11, 2026

Has 12 months after the ATP Tour given Thanasi Kokkinakis the time he needed to explore his musical side? Well, sort of.

“It’s funny. I bought a couple of DJ decks quite early on and played them for a month or two,” Kokkinakis told ATPtour.com this week in Adelaide, where he continues his comeback after recovering from pectoral muscle surgery. “Then I forgot about that and got addicted to PlayStation, which I used to play on.

“I’ve been playing a lot of NBA2K. That’s where I get pretty competitive. I go online, put on the headset and when people say shit to me, I give back a little bit! So that was one way I tried to be competitive.”

From Ugo Humbert’s love for the piano to Yannick Noah’s pop career and Jannik Sinner’s collaboration with famed tenor Andrea Bocelli, there’s a lot of crossover history between the ATP Tour and the music world. For his part, Kokkinakis doesn’t think he’ll make a similar move anytime soon.

‘I’m far away [releasing a track]“That’s probably after my career, I think!” the 29-year-old joked. “I learned the basics, but when I moved up a level I didn’t quite have the focus. We’ll see. It’s harder than I thought.”

On Monday, Kokkinakis will take the court at his hometown tournament, the Adelaide International, to compete in a tour-level singles match for the first time since his departure from the Australian Open in January 2025 against Jack Draper. His first-round clash with Sebastian Korda will be a milestone for a player who has been on trial for 12 months.

Last February, Kokkinakis underwent radical surgery – rarely if ever performed on a tennis player – after years of treating damaged tissue in his right pectoral muscle. As the ATP Tour departed Australia and continued around the world for the remainder of the 2025 season, Kokkinakis remained in Melbourne to begin a rehabilitation program that did not guarantee positive results.

“It’s definitely tricky. You get a bit of itchy feet if you sit in the same spot,” said the former number 65 in the PIF ATP Rankings, who won his only tour-level title to date in 2022 in Adelaide. “It’s definitely different being home [in Adelaide]which is fine, but if you are in another place for longer, if you are used to being there for only one or two weeks maximum when you are on tour, [it’s hard].

“I was trying to keep busy with a lot of things. I was doing some commentary, a lot of sponsorship stuff, so I was trying to stay active and keep busy. And then also my rehab and trying to get that right. That’s as much a full-time job as anything, so I tried to get myself back to a point where I could even get into the draw for this tournament and give myself a chance.”

Although it was of course frustrating that he could not participate, Kokkinakis did not completely retire from tennis in 2025.

“[I watched tennis] here and there. I didn’t shy away from it, but I didn’t follow it closely all the time,” he said. “I followed basketball a lot. I love my NBA, but if there was tennis and it was a game I was interested in, I would watch. But I wasn’t watching everything that was happening.

“[I spoke to friends on Tour] a little bit. Especially the Aussies, if they had a good result or something like that, I would message them. Draper has also reached out, and it’s clear he’s going through a bit of a rough patch right now too. So he was nice… But I wasn’t messaging people all the time. It was mainly the Australians.”

Kokkinakis is cautiously optimistic as he prepares for his comeback match against Korda, who he was due to meet in the Adelaide quarter-finals a year ago before withdrawing due to injury. Yet he is also realistic about the risk he took with his surgery, which saw him receive an Achilles tendon graft to try to attach his pectoral muscle to his shoulder.

“Just being back and getting to this point wasn’t even something I was confident about,” said Kokkinakis, who made his competitive return to doubles at the Brisbane International presented by ANZ last week alongside Nick Kyrgios. “Now I don’t know if I can get through a game, or if I can get through a few games. I really don’t know because I haven’t played. I’ve done everything I can in terms of training to give myself a chance to be here and that in itself is a victory.”

“The fact that I can go out on the track knowing that I’ve put in a lot of work and now just pray that my shoulder is OK, that definitely makes it worth it. The next step will be how I get back and where I go from here. But [it is good] just being here and even just playing some practice sets, seeing some people and hearing some cheers, and just being back and feeling those nerves and that buzz. It’s definitely an adjustment to see cameras on me again while I’m playing tennis.”