Murray & Nadal Breeze into the Australian Open 3rd Round. Federer Struggles.
The first major tennis tournament of the year, the Australian Open, kicked off this week in Melbourne.
The tournament has so far gone to plan for the top mens seeds as the quarter finals get closer. Roger Federer was the only one to have a scare when he was in danger of losing his second round match with Frenchman Gilles Simon.
Federer initially looked to be cruising in the 3rd round as Simon showed no real spark in the first two sets. Simon then began to show why he had previously been ranked as 6th in the world before an injury forced a lengthy absence.
Forcing Federer to go all out for his shots by the sheer quality of his defence and counter punching, the defending champion began to make errors. It started to seem obvious why Federer had lost their two previous encounters with Simon.
If Simon manages to move his game into a move pro-active game rather than relying on counter punches and strong defence then he really will be a force to be reckoned with.
After evening up the sets at 2-2 the 5th set was a tense affair with Roger Federer eventually emerging as the winner after gaining an early break.
Andy Murray had a similar philosophy to Simon in previous years, his game mainly based on defence and counter attack, but this year there seems to have been a change.
It looks like, after losing the final here last year, that he realises that he has to come out all guns blazing and really take the game to his opponents rather than sitting back and soaking up pressure.
He did that in his 2nd round match with Illya Marchenko not really posing enough questions of the number 5 seed as he came through 6-1,6-3,6-3.
Nadal too had no problems beating qualifier Ryan Sweeting 6-2 6-1 6-1 comfortably.
Photo: n.hewson
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