Serena secures 1st round win in Australian Open

“It’s great to finish in three sets, especially against Philipp. He’s always tough to play”, Nishikori said.

“It got me a lot of free points”.

“I let her back into the match, and it was basically my own fault that I’m not here as the victor”. Carla Suarez helped a ballboy off the court after he fell faint during her win over Viktorija Golubic.

Williams was back in full fitness in time for the tournament and, despite not being at her fluent best, she defeated Italian Camila Giorgi 6-4 7-5 in a tense battle between the pair.

Serbian Djokovic, who has won the Australian Open five times, beat the 19-year-old South Korean in the first round in an hour and 55 minutes, reports Efe.

“I got broken once, but other than that, I was able to stay focused on that part. But I’m not entitled to really talk about it. I can give my opinion”. “In the last six, seven years, I haven’t heard anything similar”.

Djokovic was an up-and-coming player at the time, not winning the first his 10 major titles until the 2008 Australian Open.

Tsonga threw a tantrum in his opening Aussie Open match after he accused his opponent’s fans of being disruptive during play. “Fortunately for me, I didn’t need to, you know, get directly involved in these particular situations”.

But the 34-year-old, clad all in canary yellow, showed no sign of injury as she came through a testing match on Rod Laver Arena against Giorgi, the tournament’s highest ranked non-seed.

Russian Margarita Gasparyan removed former French Open finalist Sara Errani, seeded 17th, 1-6 7-5 6-1, while Chinese qualifier Wang Qiang ousted American 24th seed Sloane Stephens, a semi-finalist in 2013 and victor of the season-opening Auckland Classic, 6-3 6-3.

The reigning Newcombe Medallist quickly overcame a third-set blip against Mannarino to win 7-6 (8-6) 6-4 3-6 6-3, setting up a second-round clash against either No. 2 seed Andy Murray or German Alexander Zverev.

Federer was also untroubled in his 6-2, 6-1, 6-2 win over Georgia’s Nicoloz Basilashvili as he continued his quest for a record-extending 18th Grand Slam title.

“There s been many years here where people have had sort of accidents on court, dehydrated”, said Australia s Bernard Tomic. “I just have a goal this year for the Olympics, for my country”.

Heat could be a major factor at the Australian Open, which takes place at the height of the southern hemisphere summer, and players are bracing themselves for hard conditions.

The ATP, which runs the men’s tour, and Nigel Willerton, head of the Tennis Integrity Unit, represented the four governing bodies of tennis – the ATP, the WTA, the Grand Slam Board and the International Tennis Federation – in a joint news conference to reject the allegations published by the BBC and BuzzFeed News.