Australian Open: First Round Is Officially Completed

The Australian Open has officially gotten underway: and it will run until Feb. 1, with the men’s championship happening on ESPN at 3 am EST — the women’s championship is the morning before at the same time and on the same channel.

As for the first round, it is officially completed with the start of the second beginning tomorrow Jan. 21. And some notable victories on the men’s draw, number one in the world Novak Djokovic easily skated past the first round with a 6-3 6-2 6-4 straight set win over Slovenia’s Aljaz Bedene. On top of this, defending champion Stan Wawrinka, Roger Federer, Andy Murray and Rafael Nadal enjoyed fairly reasonable straight set victories. Also, 2005 finalist Lleyton Hewitt and America’s only chance to be relevant, John Isner, has secured their bids to the second round as well.

As for women’s side of the draw, most of the main superstars passed through the opening round unscathed: Serena Williams, Maria Sharapova, Venus Williams, Caroline Wozniacki, Agnieszka Radwańska, Eugenie Bouchard and Simona Halep barely broke a sweat during their matches.

At the same time, the first round saw a high number of seeded exits: with the worst coming from Ana Ivanovic. The five seed lost uncharacteristically 1-6 6-3 6-2 to the 142nd ranked player in the world Lucie Hradecká. And she is one of eight seeded players to not make it past the opening round: the men’s draw only had five, but none were as big of a name as Ivanovic.

The Australian Open just got off to a very exciting start: the potential matches make it a tournament worth waking/staying up for — for instance, there is a possibility that Federer will face Murray in the quarterfinals, which could result in the winner playing Nadal in the semis, and even the young Halep versus Sharapova in the semifinals is a match worth watching. It is just a fun time to be a tennis fan.