Why is Australia so freaking far in the future? Whatever the reason is, it means the Australia Open started... yesterday. So let’s recap day 1:
On the women’s side: There were no upsets. Venus and Wozniacki took care of business and everyone else fell in line.
On the men’s side:
Impressive: I was most impressed with Gael Monfils and Mardy Fish. Each guy had an incredibly tough first round opponent in Thiemo De Bakker and Victor Hanescu respectively. Despite being the favorite and falling down 2 quick sets, each of these guys hung in there and won in 5. This bodes well for both of them as they should now be able to relax and hopefully realize that they are as good as their rankings.
On the women’s side: There were no upsets. Venus and Wozniacki took care of business and everyone else fell in line.
On the men’s side:
Impressive: I was most impressed with Gael Monfils and Mardy Fish. Each guy had an incredibly tough first round opponent in Thiemo De Bakker and Victor Hanescu respectively. Despite being the favorite and falling down 2 quick sets, each of these guys hung in there and won in 5. This bodes well for both of them as they should now be able to relax and hopefully realize that they are as good as their rankings.
Big Letdowns: In typical Nikolay Davydenko fashion, he blew it. Despite just having played a great tournament in Qatar, he lost all momentum by getting chewed up by Florian Mayer. Mayer is a solid player and tough first round opponent but if Davydenko was half as good as he should be, Mayer would be packing his bags.
Even more disappointing was Sam Querrey’s loss to Lukasz Kubot in five sets. This one leaves me totally confused. As Querrey is getting more experience under his belt, he should be improving, right? He should be a lock to at least get to the 3rd round, right? Well apparently not. It almost seems like the more he plays, the more he regresses. For whatever reason, Sam hasn’t figured out how to just beat up on the people that are less talented than he is and until he gets that mean streak, I’m not sure we’ll see him win anything meaningful.
Not so much a disappointment but a bummer was Ryan Harrison’s first round exit. I didn’t really have any expectations for him at this year’s Aussie Open but I was hoping he would make a little noise by winning his first match or at least going down fighting. While it seems like he’s still really young, this year is a big one for him. If he can win a few good matches, he’ll gain confidence and that will go a long way. If he wins little, he could turn into another Donald Young and that would just make me sad.
That’s it for my first day wrap up. More to come soon...
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