Tennis – Australian Open:Louk Sorensen's opening match in the Australian Open has been postponed for the day at the year's first Grand Slam event suffered weather delays. Instead of the extreme heat that has left competitors soaked in sweat and gasping for air, the players were greeted by wind and persistent showers in Melbourne.
Matches on the outside courts were delayed then interrupted by showers while organisers closed the giant retractable roofs on the two main courts to ensure the feature matches went ahead.
No play was possible in Sorensen’s match with Chinese Taipei’s Yen-Hsun Lu and, with a backlog of matches ahead of him, the Irishman will now have to wait until tomorrow to get his first taste of a Grand Slam event.
Sorensen is the first Irish player to take part in the main draw of a Grand Slam event since Matt Doyle in 1986. Sorensen’s father Sean, the current Irish Davis Cup captain, also featured in Grand Slams and played at Wimbledon and Roland Garros in the 1980s.
In all, twelve women’s singles and four men’s singles matches were postponed with more likely to fall victim to the weather before the end of the day. And with rain forecast again for tomorrow, there could be a further logjam in the match programme.
Of the matches that were complketed, defending champion Rafael Nadal recovered from a slow start to overpower Australia’s Peter Luczak 7-6 (7/0) 6-1 6-4.
The Spaniard looked tentative in the early stages of the night-session match and only came to life when his 30-year-old opponent served for the opening set at 5-3.
Nadal denied Luczak his chance, although he was aided by a couple of double faults, to break back and force a tie-break which the Spaniard then raced through without dropping a point.
It served to suck the challenge out of the Australian who, despite being cheered on by his home fans, had no answer once Nadal found his groove from the baseline. The 23-year-old reeled off eight of the next nine games as he kept his error count to a minimum.
After committing 10 unforced errors in the first set, Nadal made just six more for the remainder of the match.
The Spaniard combined that with 47 winners for the match and will next play the winner of tomorrow’s contest between Leonardo Mayer and Lukas Lacko, which was rescheduled due to the rain.
Andy Murray overcame pre-match nerves and some wayward serving to muscle into the second round with a 6-1 6-1 6-2 demolition of South Africa's Kevin Anderson.
After breezing through the first two sets in exactly an hour, the fifth-seed’s charge to victory was halted momentarily when he was broken while leading 3-1 in the third under the closed roof at Rod Laver Arena.
But the Scot, who holds Britain's hopes of ending a 74-year wait for a men's grand slam singles champion, mowed through the next four games to seal the win.
Despite exerting complete control from the start, Murray confessed to feeling jittery in his first match against the South African qualifier, who had never got past the first round of a grand slam.
"He didn't get broken in the whole qualifying," Murray said in a courtside interview. "I was a little bit nervous at the start but broke him straight away."
Although finding the target on only 35 percent of his first serves, Murray clubbed nine aces and 37 winners.
He also felt secure enough to play a few frivolous low-percentage shots in a match that appeared more like a training run.
"I'm not worrying about (my serve), though. It's the strong part of my game," said Murray, who next faces the winner of the match between France's Marc Gicquel and Simone Bolelli of Italy.
"They're both good players. Gicquel I played once before . . . he’s a tough player, a lot of experience, pretty quick. Bolelli is very talented. Can hit the ball huge from the back of the court. But I played really well against him the last couple times," the 22-year-old added.
Andy Roddick also made a winning start to his campaign but was unhappy with a line judge after a collision with the courtside official.
Wimbledon runner-up Roddick posted a 6-1 6-4 6-4 win over Dutchman Thiemo de Bakker, maintaining the form which saw him win the Brisbane International.
But American Roddick, who has returned to action this month following a knee injury, was scathing with his criticism of the line judge whose foot he tripped over early in the match as he raced to make a return.
He told the official to “move out of the way when you see a player coming” and later expanded on his thoughts, saying: “I ran into one of those immovable objects called a referee (line judge).
“He wasn’t giving up any ground. I didn’t see him. He wasn’t really trying to do much to get out of the way.”
Eleventh seed Fernando Gonzalez did not have such a smooth run, but the Chilean was ultimately too strong for Belgium’s Olivier Rochus and prevailed 6-3 6-4 3-6 6-1.
Czech player Radek Stepanek, seeded 13th, became the first major casualty in the men’s event but his defeat to big-serving Croatian Ivo Karlovic was not a huge upset.
Karlovic finished 2009 in disappointing form but was a top-16 player less than 18 months ago and has a serve which can win him matches.
Karlovic dropped the first set but fought back to win 2-6 7-6 (7/5) 6-4 3-6 6-4.
Croatia’s Ivan Ljubicic trounced Australian Jason Kubler, the 24th seed beating the home hope 6-1 6-2 6-2, and an all-German first-round tie provided the comeback story of the day.
Philipp Petzschner appeared in complete control of his match against Florian Meyer when he won the first two sets for the loss of just two games.
However, the tussle turned around and Meyer won it 0-6 2-6 6-4 6-2 6-2.
In the women’s draw, Maria Sharapova's belated return to Melbourne ended swiftly when the former world number one was knocked in the first round.
Kim Clijsters, back in Australia after missing the last two years to start a family, made a triumphant return while Dinara Safina and Svetlana Kuznetsova registered straight-sets wins.
Sharapova, making her first appearance at Melbourne Park since winning the championship two years ago, lost to fellow Russian Maria Kirilenko 7-6 3-6 6-4.
Unable to defend her title last year because of a shoulder injury, Sharapova was a shadow of the player who stormed to the 2008 title without dropping a single set, contributing to her own defeat with 66 unforced errors and 11 double faults.
"It's the first tournament of the year and I just came up against somebody that just played really good tennis," Sharapova said. "I could be disappointed or I could just take it as it is and just go back on the court and just keep working. I choose option two."
Sharapova was the only major casualty on a day where everything else went according to script.
Australian Open - day one results
Men's Singles 1st rd:(7) Andy Roddick (USA) btThiemo De Bakker (Ned) 6-1 6-4 6-4, (11) Fernando Gonzalez (Chi) btOlivier Rochus (Bel) 6-3 6-4 3-6 6-1, Bernard Tomic (Aus) btGuillaume Rufin (Fra) 6-3 6-4 6-4, Florian Mayer (Ger) btPhilipp Petzschner (Ger) 0-6 2-6 6-4 6-2 6-2, (4) Juan Martin Del Potro (Arg) btMichael Russell (USA) 6-4 6-4 3-6 6-2, (5) Andy Murray (Gbr) btKevin Anderson (Rsa) 6-1 6-1 6-2, Ivo Karlovic (Cro) bt(13) Radek Stepanek (Cze) 2-6 7-6 (7-5) 6-4 3-6 6-4, Andrey Golubev (Kaz) btMardy Fish (USA) 6-2 1-6 6-3 6-3, (24) Ivan Ljubicic (Cro) btJason Kubler (Aus) 6-1 6-2 6-2, Wayne Odesnik (USA) btBlaz Kavcic (Slo) 4-6 6-1 6-4 6-2, (2) Rafael Nadal (Spa) btPeter Luczak (Aus) 7-6 (7-0) 6-1 6-4
Women's 1st rd:(5) Elena Dementieva (Rus) btVera Dushevina (Rus) 6-2 6-1, Justine Henin (Bel) btKirsten Flipkens (Bel) 6-4 6-3, (27) Alisa Kleybanova (Rus) btJelena Dokic (Aus) 6-1 7-5, Yanina Wickmayer (Bel) btAlexandra Dulgheru (Rom) 1-6 7-5 10-8, (12) Flavia Pennetta (Ita) btAnna Chakvetadze (Rus) 6-3 3-6 6-2, (15) Kim Clijsters (Bel) btValerie Tetreault (Can) 6-0 6-4, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova (Rus) btAnastasija Sevastova (Lat) 6-2 6-4, (3) Svetlana Kuznetsova (Rus) btAnastasia Rodionova (Rus) 6-1 6-2, (24) Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez (Spa) btEvgeniya Rodina (Rus) 6-0 6-0, Jie Zheng (Chn) btShuai Peng (Chn) 0-6 6-1 6-2, Maria Kirilenko (Rus) bt(14) Maria Sharapova (Rus) 7-6 (7-4) 3-6 6-4, Yvonne Meusburger (Aut) btTimea Bacsinszky (Swi) 6-4 4-6 6-2, (30) Kateryna Bondarenko (Ukr) btIoana Raluca Olaru (Rom) 6-2 7-6 (8-6), Elena Baltacha (Gbr) btPauline Parmentier (Fra) 6-4 3-6 7-5, (2) Dinara Safina (Rus) btMagdalena Rybarikova (Svk) 6-4 6-4