Australian Open Day 1 Round-up: Stosur wins down under, Barthel out, Tipsy defeats Hewitt

Sam Stosur

Day one was as manic as any first day of a Grand Slam, but the majority of the seeds progressed through into the second round.   In the women's draw, Maria Sharapova, Agnieszka Radwanska, Li Na, Angelique Kerber, Marion Bartoli, Venus Williams, Jelena Jankovic and Ana Ivanovic all progressed through in straight sets.  A surprise to add to that list was Sam Stosur who won her first match of 2013 with a hard fought 7-6 6-3 victory over Chang Kai-Chen.  The number 32 seed, Mona Barthel was the only one to exit on day one as she was edged out in three sets by Ksenia Pervak, 7-5 2-6 6-4. Barthel made the final in Hobart last week, but perhaps the quick turnover from Saturday did not give her a chance to prepare properly for this one.  Pervak will now take on Heather Watson, who recovered from a set and break down to beat Alexandra Cadantu.

In the men's draw, Juan Monaco was the highest seed to fall in a straight sets win to Andrey Kuznetsov. Novak Djokovic and David Ferrer both won through in straight sets and were joined in round two by Janko Tipsarevic who produced an extremely efficient performance to knock out home hopes in Lleyton Hewitt.  My tip for the semi-finals, Kei Nishikori, made it through it 4 sets, but Grigor Dimitrov was not so lucky.  He went down without so much as a whimper to Julien Benneteau in three sets.  Marcos Baghdatis was involved in a typically epic Australian encounter as he fought past Albert Ramos and joined Fernando Verdasco, Nicolas Almagro and Radek Stepanek as the five set winners on day one.

Day 2... the line-up of matches for day 2 is far superior to than that of day 1.  The highlight in the womens draw will be Wozniacki/Lisicki, which I am hoping to catch some of and in the mens draw, Monfils/Dologolov should be a lot of fun.  I might get dragged away from my computer due to work commitments later this week, but I will endeavour to keep blogging and will at least be tweeting.  You can follow my rambles on Twitter (if you like!) by clicking on the right hand tab at the top of my blog - my name is Moo_1989 :-)  From Wednesday and the second round, I aim to post my daily predictions for the top matches of each day.

My predictions so far - I had a strong day in the women, but have dived in one section of the mens draw where I had Hewitt/Dimitrov in R3... you can follow the progress of my draws through the week for the WTA HERE and ATP HERE.    


Highlights from day one for anyone like me, who ends up missing most of the action :-( I saw the end of Cibulkova/Barty this morning and despite the loss, was quite impressed with the young Aussie.