Wednesday 17 January 2018

Federer and Barty entertain

The first Tuesday night of Aus Open 2018 was full of entertaining tennis, and it began with defending champion Roger Federer (2) in full flight, playing all his menu of delicious shots with the same aplomb of his previous visits to Rod Laver Arena.

His closest spectator was opponent Aljaz Bedene from Slovenia and he opened pleasingly, holding serve after Federer delivered a love game to start.

Roger was on song with two more aces and two splendid forehands to take a 2-1 lead, untouched on serve yet.

A string of unforced errors on Bedene’s next service game gave Federer three break chances which were wasted. A fourth chance was lapped up with a forehand winner and Roger led 3-1.

Three from three love games on serve and it was 4-1.

 Bedene served out impressively with an ace and forehand winner - 2-4.

Federer actually is human and lost a point on serve with an unforced error but still moved to 5-2 easily.

Bedene was however becoming more competitive in rallies now, and the match was entertaining, Roger made to work harder.

Bedene held to love before Federer held three set points - two unlikely mistakes from the Swiss racquet delayed the inevitable and a forehand clinched it 6-3. 

Set two was a tight affair with Federer breaking Bedene in the opening game and serve held for the remainder of the set.

When serving for a two set lead, Federer was 15-30 but an ace was timely for the second seed. 6-3 6-4.

Bedene took Federer to deuce twice in Set three but it was Federer again who broke early and led 3-1. He retained this advantage and when Bedene served at 3-5 Roger broke a final time to win 6-3 6-4 6-3.  

This was the perfect hit out for Federer in the first round.

Ash Barty began her match with Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka well, winning the opening three games.

However, her tall opponent, a student at the Belarus School of Scream and Grunt (where compatriot Vika Azarenka graduated with honours), came back with a game full of hard hitting ground strokes which overwhelmed Barty and trapped her in shots unhelpful to her game plan.

The Aussie was broken back in the sixth game thanks to a number of forced errors and from there it was a struggle to make it to a tie break.

Once there Barty played a shocker and Sabalenka was up a set 7-6(2). 

Suddenly Ash changed her game, slowing her shots when appropriate and giving Aryna more variety to think about.

A break for the Aussie in the opening game of set two was just the tonic but was soured when a double fault brought it back to 2-2.

Barty had two chances to break again in game 7 and she converted the second with a forehand winner.  

This was enough to eventually hold out the set 6-4, clinched with an ace.

It took 14 points for Ash to level at 2-2 in the decider, but then she broke and held again for 4-2.

At 5-4 Ash found three match points thanks to Sabalenka errors - just one was saved before an ace saw Barty through to the second round.

If Barty hadn’t adjusted her game plan after the first set she would have certainly exited the Open.

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