Saturday 20 / April / 2024
Melbourne: Ivo Karlovic fired down 75 aces in a record Australian Open marathon against Argentina's Horacio Zeballos which lasted five hours, 15 minutes and finished in a 6-7(6), 3-6, 7-5, 6-2, 22-20 first-round victory for the Croatian on Tuesday.
The 37-year-old 20th seed threw his hands in the air in delight after Zeballos ballooned an attempted lob high into the night sky to finally bring an end to the gruelling 157-minute fifth set.
Karlovic embraced his exhausted opponent then exchanged high fives with a large part of the crowd which had stuck with the contest from its start in the afternoon sun to the finish under the low wattage lights on the tiny Court 19.
With all the other matches on the outer courts long finished, a carnival atmosphere had developed as the two players tried and failed to break each other's serve in the final set.
Organisers sent ballboys running off to get more energy drinks as the marathon continued with the gloom punctuated occasionally by fireworks being set off at a match at the neighbouring Melbourne Cricket Ground.
"I was just trying to hang in there, just point by point," said Karlovic.
"(I had energy drink) gatorades and water, I don't know. I mean, I began really bad. As the match was going on, it was little bit less hot also. So that kind of also gave me opportunity to be more, how you say, not tired."
Karlovic's ace total was an Australian Open record for a match and he flung down 38 in the final set alone.
Zeballos chipped in with 33 in the match and 15 in the last stanza.
The break point Karlovic converted was only the fourth in the 42 games in the deciding set, with long rallies at a premium as the serves continued to thwack into the back fence at both ends.
Despite its length, the contest was still 38 minutes shy of the record for the longest match at the Australian Open - the 2012 final between Novak Djokovic and Rafa Nadal having gone five hours and 53 minutes.
Longest match
However, it was a record for the highest number of games in Melbourne in the tiebreak era, beating by one the 83 American Andy Roddick played to beat Younes El Aynaoui 4-6, 7-6, 4-6, 6-4, 21-19 at Melbourne Park in 2003.
The longest match in the record books is American John Isner's 6-4, 3-6, 6-7(7), 7-6(3), 70-68 victory over Frenchman Nicolas Mahut after 11 hours, five minutes of play over three days at Wimbledon in 2010.
In that duel Isner served a world record 113 aces, closely followed by Mahut's 103. Karlovic's 75 was not his highest total in a match, falling just shy of the 78 he served against Radek Stepanek in a Davis Cup tie in 2009.
"I was thinking about that other match Isner against Mahut, I was hoping little bit it could go this long so I could also have a record," said Karlovic.
Karlovic will have two days to rest his legs before his second round contest against local wildcard Andrew Whittingham, a serve volleyer who earlier beat Czech Adam Pavlasek 6-4, 4-6, 6-2, 6-3 in a relatively modest 145 minutes.
"Arm is good, but my knee, my back, little bit not so good. Elbow," he said.
"I don't know how I will recover. Tomorrow off. I will not even hit. I'm just going to do the ice bath, try to hit good, go to sleep early. Hopefully that will be enough."
Djokovic wins
Novak Djokovic may have cursed the draw for throwing up Fernando Verdasco as the first opponent in his Australian Open defence on Tuesday but the tough match-up against the Spanish giant-killer ultimately proved a blessing in disguise.
The Serb launched his bid for a record seventh title at Melbourne Park with an impressive 6-1, 7-6(4), 6-2 win over the man who knocked Rafa Nadal out in the first round of last year's tournament.
Djokovic was forced to save five match points to beat Verdasco at the recent Qatar Open and was broken twice during a thrilling second set under the lights of Rod Laver Arena.
But the second seed defended brilliantly to defuse the veteran lefthander's power game and closed out the two-hour 20-minute clash.
"I knew that winning the second set would be crucial because I definitely didn't want to give him wings," Djokovic told reporters after setting up a second round clash against Uzbek Denis Istomin.
"I didn't want to have him start swinging at the ball, as he knows.
"I don't know how he felt about the draw. But I personally think that I could have drawn... an easier player. But nothing is easy obviously.
"From one perspective it was good that I got to have the very tough first-round match, because it made me prepare better and kind of approach this match and the tournament with the right intensity right from the blocks, right from the first point."
Wozniacki relieved
Since her invites to the White House are likely to dry up once outgoing U.S. President Barack Obama vacates the premises this week, Caroline Wozniacki was relieved to snap her backward sliding run at the Australian Open on Tuesday.
After tweeting a picture of herself with Obama with the message "Thank you Mr President!... I'll miss playing tennis with you at the White House", the former world number one was relieved that she finally bucked a worrying trend at the Australian Open.
Since reaching the Australian Open semi-finals in 2011, Wozniacki had fallen one round earlier in each subsequent visit to Melbourne Park - which meant her journey to this season's opening grand slam was full of trepidation.
"My trend has been semis, quarters, fourth, third, second, first round, and then, according to my trend, I should have been in the third-round quallies (this year)," the bubbly Dane, whose ranking has slipped to 20th, quipped on Tuesday following her 6-1, 6-2 first-round rout of local hope Arina Rodionova.
"Thankfully that did not happen and I'm going the right direction."
Zverev revels
The racket had it coming. It had been annoying him for some time and deserved it, according to Alexander Zverev.
So the 19-year-old German took matters into his own hands and smashed it twice into the Hisense Arena ground at the start of the fourth set in his Australian Open first round clash with Robin Haase on Tuesday.
It worked. The cathartic release ended a flurry of unforced errors and double faults flying off his racket and enabled him to fight back and advance to the second round with a 6-2, 3-6, 5-7, 6-3, 6-2 victory over the 29-year-old Dutchman.
"I think letting my frustration out in the beginning of the fourth helped me a little bit," Zverev told reporters. "Sometimes you just have to let go."
Prior to that outburst, Zverev, considered one of the best players among the 'Generation Next' of athletes on the men's circuit, had been facing the real possibility of an early exit after he lost the second and third sets and been broken early in the fourth.
Easy for Raonic
Milos Raonic was not going to be too effusive after his first round victory over Germany's Dustin Brown at the Australian Open on Tuesday because as far as he was concerned he did what he needed to do.
The Canadian third seed wasted little time in dispatching the enigmatic dreadlocked German 6-3, 6-4, 6-2 in 93 minutes on Margaret Court Arena, with a powerful service game.
Raonic, a semifinalist at Melbourne Park last year, broke Brown once in each of the first two sets and then twice in the third. He also fired down 18 aces and another 20 unreturned serves.
"I was much more solid on the return," added Raonic who faces Gilles Muller in the next round.
He had also been working with new coach Richard Krajicek to come forward more and block off the options in the open court especially against players like Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic, who are virtually impenetrable from the baseline.
Nadal through
Rafa Nadal showed there was plenty of life in his battered body yet when he cast aside the disappointments of last year to reach the second round of the Australian Open with a 6-3, 6-4, 6-4 victory over Florian Mayer on Tuesday.
Easily avoiding the embarrassment of a back-to-back first round exits at Melbourne Park, the 30-year-old needed a single break in each set to proceed after a little over two hours in the brutal afternoon sun.
The Spaniard sealed the victory with a 39th winner, the 25th off his awesome forehand, and raised his arms to the skies to accept the salute of the crowd on the court where he won the title in 2009.
"It's never easy in the first round," Nadal said. "There are always a few more nerves at the beginning. The way that he plays is not conventional. It's not easy to read his game."
Seeded ninth after a 2016 season which started with the five-set upset at the hands of Fernando Verdasco at Melbourne Park and was seriously disrupted then curtailed by a wrist injury, Nadal next faces Cypriot Marcos Baghdatis.
Serena sails
Two matches in four months, a dodgy knee and a sweltering day had doubts swirling around Serena Williams as she took centre court for her first round match against talented Swiss Belinda Bencic at the Australian Open on Tuesday.
It took 79 minutes for the 35-year-old American to bat them all away, however, an emphatic 6-4, 6-3 win at Rod Laver Arena providing a near-perfect launch of her bid to clinch a record 23rd grand slam title in the professional era.
Fiance Alexis Ohanian, a social media entrepreneur, was a spectator in the crowd but the wedding plans remain on hold for at least another match, and much longer if the American great has her way at Melbourne Park. - Reuters
