30 years ago the illustrious Italian journalist Rino Tommasi famously claimed that the Australian Open was the “the limping leg of the Four Grand Slams”. Rino’s statement utterly enraged Brian Tobin, who was the president of the Australian Tennis Federation between 1977 and 1989 and who would later become the president of the International Tennis Federation (1991-99). The truth is that at the turn of the 1980s the Australian Open was twice won by Johan Kriek and once by Brian Teacher. And among the finalists we also had John Lloyd, who was probably better known as Mister Evert.
Since then the Australian Open made incredible progress. It was the first Grand Slam tournament to build a retractable roof and today it is the only event with three indoor courts. It is also the very first tournament to sell a very small batch of 12 super VIP tickets to a few lucky – or shall we say wealthy – spectators who will have the opportunity to sit courtside, on the opposite side of the chair umpire and less than 8 yards from the doubles alley.
The new extraordinary Tanderrum footbridge is now providing thousands of fans with direct access to Melbourne Park by linking the city with the tennis venue and shaving pedestrian travel time to under ten minutes. As a result, the Australian Open is now the only Grand Slam tournament that directly lives in the heart of a big city and is truly accessible to everyone.
The first day of the Australian Open started with fireworks right off the bat. Among the eight seeds that fell on day one (five women and three men), the first player to be sent home was No. 4 seed Simona Halep, who has never done particularly well down under. After reaching the quarterfinals twice in 2014 and 2015 when she got bageled by Cibulkova and Makarova, last year she suffered a horrible loss to the surprising Chinese Shuai Zhang and today she took a colossal 63 61 beat down at the hands of the 52nd ranked American Shelby Rogers. The Romanian star – who years ago made gossip headlines by having a breast reduction to improve her tennis results – would have desperately needed a healthy knee to climb over Rogers today. Unfortunately persistent knee problems have prevented Halep to perform at her best in the last many months.
If Begu had not emerged unscathed from her first round match against the always unpredictable Shvedova, it would have been a disastrous day for Romanian tennis. Another Romanian player Patricia Tig was knocked out by Olympic gold medalist Monica Puig of Puerto Rico in only 53 minutes. My Belgian colleague Yves Simon seemed to be particularly excited about these awful results posted by the Romanian girls, as Belgium is getting ready to take on Romania in a Fed Cup tie next February.
No. 10 seed Tomas Berdych had a short day at the office as Luca Vanni of Italy was forced to retire with a groin strain injury after only 40 minutes of play. During his post-match press conference, when I told Tomas about the popular Italian phrase ‘killing a dead man’ and asked him if he did not feel
guilty, he ironically replied: “I didn’t kill him, he killed himself!” He then expressed his candid opinion about a possible third round encounter with Roger Federer.
Speaking of Italian tennis, No. 15 Roberta Vinci lost in straight sets to the Californian Coco Vandeweghe, who miraculously survived a heat stroke that required an emergency treatment in the middle of the second set. Much more predictable was Francesca Schiavone’s loss to another player from California – the American qualifier Julia Boserup, who scored a convincing straight set win, 62 64. While a few journalists sometimes take pleasure in asking Serena Williams about Roberta Vinci, today the US West Coast certainly had a nice revenge.
Unfortunately Francesca wasn’t as graceful as Kiki Bertens in her defeat. The 19th seeded Dutchwoman kindly accepted to speak with my colleague William Held from the Dutch newspaper “De Telegraaf”, despite her unexpected defeat against the American Varvara Lepchenko. After arriving three minutes late to Schiavone’s post-match press conference, I kindly asked her if she had time for a couple of questions. I was abruptly turned away.
In the nineties the Dutch were used to producing a great number of world class players, such as Krajicek, Siemerink, Haarhuis , Eltingh, Schalken, Sluiter, Verkerk, Van Lottum, Schultz, Oremans and Boogert. With Robin Haase as the only remaining Dutch player in the main draw, the golden age of Dutch tennis is now officially over.
Two Spanish players were today involved in two separate incidents that required the doctors’ intervention. In the women’s tournament Muguruza was able to battle through an injury and survived to live another day, while in the men’s Almagro threw in the towel after only 4 games and 23 minutes of play. Almagro has been suffering from an ankle injury for days and many questioned whether he made a genuine attempt at competing for real or he only took the court to cash in $37,000, which is the prize-money for losing in the first round. “I earned more than 10 million dollars and was a top ten player, I don’t need that money “, he claimed after the match.
It was sad to see sixteen year old Destanee Aiava stumble over her first hurdle. The only player born in the 2000s lost 63 76 to the far more experienced Mona Barthel of Germany, who once reached No. 23 in the WTA rankings but has currently slipped to No. 181.
Kei Nishikori kept the entire country of Japan on the edge of their seat when he failed to convert a match point in the fourth set tie-breaker against the 45th ranked Alex Kuznetsov of Russia. Nishikori is considered one of the most physically fragile players on the ATP Tour and his recurrent injuries often left him down in the past. Yet in the fifth set, he emerges as the winner more often than not and today’s match was no exception. Last year Kuznetsov – who is now coached by former world No. 6 Joakim Nystrom – was the only outsider to reach the round of 16.
The two Australian frenemies Kyrgios and Tomic both easily won their first round matches to the delight of the local crowd. Kyrgios is now facing the challenge presented by Andreas Seppi of Italy in the second round, a highly anticipated rematch of two years ago when Seppi ended up losing despite holding a two set advantage and a match point.
Andy Murray faced a tough task against Ilya Marchenko of Ukraine, but he managed to win in straight sets, 75 76 62.
The two Swiss superstars Roger Federer and Stan Wawrinka absolutely stole the show during the evening session. Wawrinka fought off the challenge of Martin Klizan in a five set thriller, while Roger Federer enchanted the Rod Laver arena with a four set victory against Jurgen Melzer.
Besides No. 4 Halep, No. 15 Vinci and No. 19 Bertens, No. 23 Kasatkina and No. 26 Siegemund also fell in the first round of the women’s tournament. Another surprising result was the defeat of Siniakova, who had recently showed some good form by winning the Shenzhen title at the beginning of the year.
In the men’s event, No. 15 Pouille limped his way out of the tournament against the qualifier Bublik in four sets, 60 36 63 64; No. 22 Cuevas lost to Schwartzmann lost to 63 63 60; and No. 26 Ramos Vinolas was defeated by Lacko 46 75 16 64 63.
I had the pleasure to meet an old acquaintance of mine at the media restaurant – Marion Bartoli, the Frenchwoman who won one of the most surprising Wimbledon tournaments in history. I met her for the first time when she was still playing in the juniors and sat in the seat beside me on a Melbourne-Paris flight. It was great to see that her health has tremendously improved in the last few months. To my great surprise, I noticed six hard-boiled eggs in her plate. So I asked her how she was doing and if that was her only lunch. She said, “Hello! Yes, I do what my doctor tells me to do.” She ended up eating only the white part of the eggs. My best wishes to you, Marion. You are one of the smartest tennis players that I have ever known.
Ubaldo Scanagatta (Article translation provided by T&L Global – Translation & Language Solutions – www.t-global.com )
