Daniil Medvedev reached the second round of the Australian Open

On the second day of the Australian Open, which was gaining momentum in Melbourne, the third world ranking number Daniil Medvedev entered the fray. Following the results of his opening match, which also became his first this season, the strongest Russian tennis player beat the Frenchman Terence Atman, who made his way into the main draw through qualification and refused to continue the fight at the beginning of the fourth set. In the women’s half of the tournament, 16-year-old Russian debutant Mirra Andreeva defeated American Bernarda Pera in two games.

Australian Open debutant Terence Atman is a typical representative of the French school of tennis, rich in original talents, who, without having outstanding achievements, on a good day can pose a danger even to such famous rivals as Daniil Medvedev. A tall left-hander with a powerful serve and his own playing style, he still has minimal experience of playing in tournaments at the level of the Association of Tennis Professionals, but, of course, has good prospects. Meetings with such opponents require maximum attention from the favorites from beginning to end. Otherwise, it’s easy to run into problems that no one needs at the beginning of the first week of a Grand Slam tournament, and sometimes even run into a knockout in the form of a sensational defeat. In this case, Medvedev managed to avoid the worst-case scenario, although there was a period during this match when the Russian’s fans became anxious.

It came at the end of the first game, which Medvedev, leading 5:3, gave to Atman with his errors in the tenth and twelfth games of his serve. Then, however, everything fell into place, besides, at the beginning of the third set, the Frenchman began to have convulsions in 30-degree heat, and, having lost two games, he was forced to give up continuing the fight. It would be strange if Medvedev, who this season as an experiment gave up playing practice before the Australian Open, immediately showed a level close to the maximum. However, in the second round a more famous opponent awaits him – Finn Emil Ruusuvuori, who in January already managed to reach the finals at a tournament in Hong Kong. In two previous meetings with this middle player from the top hundred of the ATP rankings, the Russian avoided difficulties, but now Ruusuvuori is on the rise, and giving him points in key rallies can be fraught with serious consequences.

A few hours after Medvedev, Karen Khachanov, last year’s semifinalist, who apparently needs to reach at least the quarterfinals in Melbourne, also entered the fight at the Australian Open. This task is very difficult; in the fourth round, Khachanov faces Italian Jannik Sinner, although the Russian managed to clear the first hurdle. In a match against the dangerous German Daniel Altmaier that lasted more than four hours, the fourth game turned out to be indicative, during which Khachanov had a game advantage, but lost the eleventh game, then returned serve at the last moment and played well in the second tiebreaker in a row.

Having won a difficult, but classic victory for himself, Khachanov entered the second round against the qualified American Alexander Kovacevich.

With him, in theory, it should be a little simpler.

For the second day in a row, the women’s half of the tournament ended controversially for the Russians. The fact is that after Lyudmila Samsonova, two other tennis players in the top twenty immediately dropped out of the competition. In more than three hours, Ekaterina Alexandrova was unable to break the resistance of 35-year-old German Laura Siegemund, who in the fall, together with Vera Zvonareva, won the final tournament of the Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) in doubles, and Veronika Kudermetova, who did not advance further in the previous season second round at the Grand Slam tournaments, she failed to cope with the Swiss Victoria Golubic.

Some compensation for these failures was the victory of 16-year-old Mirra Andreeva over American left-hander Bernarda Pera. The young Russian woman managed to pick up the keys to a not-so-pleasant opponent and will now take the maturity test against the sixth racket of the world, Tunisian Ouns Jabir, a three-time major finalist who also has a quarterfinal in the 2020 Australian Open. But the Czech Marketa Vondrousova, who beat Jabir in the Wimbledon final six months ago and is one line lower in the world classification, was able to take only three games from the Ukrainian Dayana Yastremska. And this is the main sensation of the first two days of the championship.

Evgeniy Fedyakov