Lucky Prajnesh in Aus Open main draw

Prajnesh Gunneswaran made the Grand Slam main draw for the fifth straight time after he sneaked into the Australian Open as a lucky loser on Saturday.

The World No. 122 had come through the qualifiers in last year's Australian Open, falling in the first round against American rising star Frances Tiafoe, and went on to make the main draw in the other three events thanks to his rankings which stayed in the top 100 for most of the year.

Prajnesh will take on Tatsuma Ito, ranked 144, in the first round on Monday with a potential mouthwatering face-off against Novak Djokovic on the cards if he overcomes his first hurdle. He had lost to Ernests Gulbis in the final round of the qualifiers on Friday but a direct entrant pulled out to hand Prajnesh the lucky loser spot.

"It's a lucky loser main draw position so I didn't actually get through on merit but I'm happy that I gave myself a chance by getting to the final round of qualifiers and I hope to make the most of it," Prajnesh told DH.

"Obviously it's motivating to see a potential second-round clash (against Djokovic) but at this moment, I'm focused on the first round and try do my best and get through it," he said adding that the smog issue 'seemed fine as of now.'

Interestingly, back in 2018, Prajnesh was the lucky loser in the French Open when Nick Kyrgios pulled out in the last minute. However, the Indian star had already left Paris and had to wait till last year's Australian Open to make his Grand Slam bow.

The 30-year-old is coming into the tournament on the back of the best year on the Tour where he peaked at a career high ranking of 75. However, his rankings fell towards the latter half of the year.

"My past year performance has been up and down. I've had some very good results in the beginning and not so great through the summer. I think 2018 summer on till 2019 till March April... 10 months I played really well and then not as good a little after that," he said.

"I need to put some work and recreate those results. Obviously, I'm playing at a higher level also in terms of competition and I need to keep adapting and hopefully I will do better than I did (this season)," he added.