World number five Rafael Nadal was sent crashing out of the Australian Open first round by fellow Spanish left-hander Fernando Verdasco in an epic five-set match on Tuesday.
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Serena Williams was on court preparing for her opening 6-4, 7-5 win over No. 34-ranked Camila Giorgi when Kermode was holding a news conference to respond to the fixing allegations.
It is the first time Nadal has lost in the Australian Open first round and means he has now failed to reach the second week of three consecutive major tournaments.
With her parents watching in the crowd for the first time, the 25-year-old wept with emotion at Margaret Court Arena after completing a stunning 6-4 6-3 win to set up a second round match with Frenchwoman Alize Cornet. “Probably he deserved”, Nadal said.
The momentum had well and truly swung and Verdasco broke again in the sixth game, a crunching forehand victor followed by a Nadal error as he took a 4-2 lead.
“No”, she said. “Unfortunately, my home is Great Britain”.
“I think it’s just an accumulation of having opportunities to play against such players, and, yeah, to really start feeling comfortable on these sorts of stages”, she said. Sharapova, who plays No. 56 Nao Hibino of Japan – they’ve never played each other – is just the opposite – “ultimately you know all the players that are competing here”.
“I’ve practised with Dolgopolov in the off-season in Dubai”.
The Russian needed just 71 minutes to dispose of her opponent, although she was broken twice during the first set, including when she held two set points with the score at 5-1.
Murray will next play Samuel Groth, who beat Adrian Mannarino 7-6 (6), 6-4, 3-6, 6-3.
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) – Venus Williams tried to rally, winning two games and getting another break-point chance after falling a set and 5-0 behind, before her 16th trip to the Australian Open finished in a first-round loss to Johanna Konta.
Now the world No.47, she is 4-2 against top-10 players and the only British woman left in the singles draw after Heather Watson lost on Monday.
Verdasco’s fearless approach started to test Nadal’s nerves in the fourth, and both men swapped breaks before the 2009 champion conceded the set in another tie-break.
The 92nd-ranked Bondarenko returned to the tour in 2014 and had failed to get through qualifying at four majors before making the main draw at last year’s U.S. Open.
“It’s irrelevant how old she is because she’s such a champion with so much experience and knowledge”, said Konta.
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Serena Williams has swiftly moved through to the third round at Melbourne Park with a 6-1, 6-2 win over Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei in exactly one hour.
