2011 Australian Open: Roger Federer moves ahead while Nikolay Davydenko exits in first round
Tennis superstars made their way to Melbourne Park today to kick off the first Grand Slam of the year. More than 250 tennis players are playing at the Australian Open this
week.
Coming from a title win at the 2011 Qatar ExxonMobil Open a week ago, world number two Roger Federer started his run for the fifth Australian Open title at Rod Laver Arena
on Monday. He had won the 2010 title at the event after doing away with Andy Murray in the final. Seeded second in the event this year, the Swiss maestro started his title defence against Slovak Lukas Lacko.
This is Lacko’s second match of the year against a top 10 player. He had earlier faced Rafael Nadal in the second round of the Doha event. Though he had lost the match,
Lacko had enjoyed a bagel set win over the top Spaniard.
Winning the toss, Federer opted to serve first and rushing into a 40-0 lead won the first game. Although Lacko tied the score 1-1 on the next game, he failed to win any
more games. Breaking Lacko’s service in the third game, Federer sailed into a comfortable lead and clinch a breadstick victory in twenty minutes.
Coming into the second set, Lacko opened serve though it was broken by the Swiss. Continuing to dominate the court, Federer led 3-0 before allowing Lacko to win a game.
Sending the Slovak running all over the court, Federer won three successive games to clinch another breadstick victory, again in less than thirty minutes.
Going 2-0 in the sets core, Federer started strong in the third set though he Lacko put up some resistance, keeping the score tied for six games. Winning the seventh game
on his serve and breaking Lacko’s service in the eighth after three deuces, Federer secured a 5-3 lead. Serving for the ninth, Federer rushed to a 40-15 lead in the score before clinching the set 6-3.
Serving eight aces and losing only thirteen of sixty points on service, Federer was able to secure a straight set victory in only eighty four minutes. The defending champion
managed to convert seven of fourteen breakpoints. The Swiss moves ahead to play either Gilles Simon or Yen-Hsun Lu.
Although Federer sails through into the second round, not all seeds were as lucky. With eighteenth seed Sam Querry already falling out in the first round, the second seed
casualty came in Nikolay Davydenko.
Having enjoyed a final run at the Doha event one week and then put in some more practice at the 2011 Kooyong AAMI Classic last week, it came as much surprise to fans and
critics alike when the twenty third seeded Russian was forced to exit in the first round. Davydenko drew against Florian Mayer with whom he already enjoyed a 2-1 lead in the career head to head. However, the much lower ranked Mayer got the better off the Russian
leveling the career head to head 2-2.
Having started off strong, Mayer secured a 6-3 victory in the first set before losing the second set 4-6. Having won the second set, Davydenko put up much fight in the third
set taking it into a tiebreaker. However, failing to find his ground Davydenko lost the tiebreaker 4-7. Mayer entered the fourth set in full form and after holding his own against the Russian eventually won 6-4. Florian moves ahead to play twelfth seed Gael
Monfils.
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