Serena Outguns Giorgi In Melbourne

Venus Williams of the United States hits a forehand return to Johanna Konta of Britain during their first round match at the Australian Open tennis championships in Melbourne, Australia, Tuesday, Jan. 19, 2016.

All eyes are on the world number one after he fell just one win short of a calendar-year Grand Slam in 2015, and became the first player to top $16 million in prize money in a season.

The seventh seed won 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 in one hour and 55 minutes to set up a second-round clash with American Austin Krajicek. She wouldn’t play another official match the rest of 2015 after the U.S. Open and withdrew from the one match she played in 2016 at the Hopman Cup.

“It was a nice opening match with real Australian summer conditions”, said the Serb, who is bidding for a record sixth Australian Open crown.

Big-serving Croat Ivo Karlovic was the first seeded casualty, the No. 22 seed retiring from his first-round match against Argentine Federico Delbonis while trailing 7-6 (7-4), 6-4, 2-1.

“It’s great. It was an hour and 43 minutes and I didn’t feel it at all”.

Djokovic said he thought the allegations related to matches from nearly 10 years ago and didn’t involve active players.

Three suspect matches were at Wimbledon, and eight of the players under suspicion were due to take to the courts for the Australian Open, the BBC and BuzzFeed claimed.

“I have been going non-stop since the London Olympics and, seeing that this is another Olympic year, I kind of wanted to start the year out really fresh and really go at it again as hard as I can”.

Caroline Wozniacki suffered a similar fate at the hands of Kazakhstan’s Yulia Putintseva, losing 1-6 7-6(3) 6-4 while Sam Stosur, the former US Open champion, made her now traditional early exit from her home grand slam 6-4 7-6 (6).

The 24th seed, Sloane Stephens, who beat Serena Williams in the 2013 Australian Open quarter-finals, went out 6-3 6-3 to Chinese qualifier Wang Qiang.

Williams’ next opponent will be an 18-year-old – she’ll face the victor of the match between Russia’s Daria Kasatkina and Croatia’s Ana Konjuh, who were both born the year before Williams’ first Australian Open.

Kohlschreiber, ranked No. 34, was the highest ranked of the men’s players who were unseeded at the tournament.

“This has been the most successful Grand Slam for me and probably one of the top two or three most successful tournaments in my career, ” Djokovic said. She declined to talk to the media after the match, a violation that could lead to a fine.

While Williams perished, Spanish third seed Garbine Muguruza had no such troubles earlier in advancing to the second round with a 6-0 6-4 win over Anett Kontaveit of Estonia.

Serena Williams might not have played in any tournaments since her U.S. Open loss, but that is not to say it was an uneventful past four months for her. She was named Sports Illustrated’s Sportsperson of the Year, the first woman to do so on an individual basis since 1983.

Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) chief Chris Kermode rejected any suggestion that match-fixing evidence had been covered up or ignored.