West Australian amateur tennis player Steve Yarwood centimetres away from $1 million shot

West Australian amateur tennis player Steve Yarwood has fallen agonisingly short of progressing to the next round of the Australian Open’s $1 million 1 Point Slam.

Yarwood, 38, drew Australian tennis’s biggest drawcard Nick Kyrgios for the one-point “match” on Wednesday in front of a packed Rod Laver Arena centre court.

Winning the right to serve through his seventh consecutive pre-match game of paper, rock, scissors in the novel Australia-wide tournament with the last 48 meeting in Melbourne, Yarwood wasn’t clean with his opener which the former world No. 13 sent back with a nervous forehand.

Father of two Yarwood, who had not hit a ground shot having won all of his six previous points on serve, then struck a forehand and advanced to the net in hope but Kyrgios’ cross-court backhand nicked the line.

For a moment, Yarwood, thought he’d toppled a giant.

Yarwood, who was representing Cottesloe Tennis Club, was denied he chance to pocket $1 million and win a Kia car as the leading amateur.

He would have faced Russian Andrey Rublev, the Australian Open 12th seed, in the second round with a possible meeting with world No. 1 Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz in the quarter finals on the line.

But it was not to be in the sudden-death tournament in which every match is just a single point – win and advance, lose and it’s over.