Australian Open 2011: Rafael Nadal eases into third round
World number 1 Rafael Nadal had a very easy match in the second round of the Australian Open against the American Ryan Sweeting. The match was won in straight sets by Nadal and it lasted for only 1 hour and 41 minutes.
Nadal had won his first match of the Australian Open without even losing a single game against the Brazilian Marcos Daniel. He won 11 games before Marcos retired from the match due to an injury.
Having not lost a single game in his campaign, the second round match started for Nadal exactly where he left the first one. He won two games after he broke Sweeting on his first service game of the match.
The score-line of the match was 6-2, 6-1 and 6-1 in favour of Nadal. The Spaniard was broken only once in the match as opposed to him breaking the American’s serve, a merciless eight times.
Nadal admitted in the last match that he needed to improve on his serve and in the post-match interview, he stated, “I think I played a solid match. A few mistakes with the backhand, that's all. My serve improved a lot [from] the first day.”
The world number 116 Sweeting was not disheartened with the result of the match and said, “I thought I competed well, I played as best as I could have today. I think I could have served a little bit better. But I felt like in order to win a point, I had
to execute perfectly. And he didn't give me anything for free, which is tough. I'm used to that, playing these matches.”
Back-to-back dominant wins will be encouraging for Nadal. He hasn’t sweat at all in the tournament so far which will be quite relaxing for him. On the other hand, his toughest opponent Roger Federer had a very tough second round match.
Federer was given a tough challenge in his second round match by Frenchman Gilles Simon. The match lasted for five sets but the Swiss eventually emerged as the winner in the epic battle.
Even though Nadal had two easy matches, he wouldn't want to ignore the increasing competition in the further rounds. The easy start might just prove out to be slightly negative for the Spaniard as he might be relaxed in the next rounds, something his opponents
would love to see.
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