Australia Open | Serena tested as Djokovic cruises through first round

“I just started hitting winners – I don’t know how”.

Nadal didn’t make it past the quarter-finals at any grand slam a year ago as he battled persistent knee issues but he was at a loss to explain his latest performance.

Serena Williams returned to Grand Slam tennis with a bang today as the start of the Australian Open was overshadowed by allegations of widespread match-fixing in tennis.

Williams cut short her 2015 season after defeat in the US Open semi-finals ended her bid for a calendar-year Grand Slam, and she pulled out of this month’s Hopman Cup with an inflamed knee.

Konta denied that 35-year-old Williams’ age had anything to do with the American’s laboured display.

It didn’t get any better in the second set with a despondent Williams, her left thigh heavily strapped, unable to handle the Konta serve or find the shots to hurt an opponent oozing confidence.

Murray, who beat beat Alexander Zverev 6-1, 6-2, 6-3, said it was “hypocritical” that tournaments – the Australian Open’s official betting partner is William Hill – could be sponsored by betting companies while players can’t.

Williams was playing great tennis for most of past year, though obviously her sister, Serena Williams, dominates most of the discussion. She reached the quarterfinals at the Australian and U.S. Opens – the first and last majors of the year. “I’m quite pleased with the way I played tonight”. I don’t know how. “You have to be proactive with things like this and go and speak to the players rather than them reading about it in the newspapers or listening to it on the TV or the radio”.

“I just needed that time to just recover the best of my ability and get really fit… and really train and get ready for the season”.

“I’m was just trying to fight for every point, because it’s too tough to win a game”.

Again Nadal edged ahead with an early break in the fifth, but it was Verdasco who strung together six games in a row, including two breaks of serve, to seal victory in four hours and 41 minutes.

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.

Kateryna Bondarenko earned one of her biggest wins since returning from retirement after having a baby in 2013, beating two-time major victor and No. 23-seeded Svetlana Kuznetsova 6-1, 7-5.

“Very happy, conditions are extremely quick”, he said. “But I’m really excited about it”, said Sharapova, who said she has been interviewing her mother, father and grandparents and plans to include some journals she kept as a young girl.