TIL Desk Sports/ Former champion Rafael Nadal showed no signs of discomfort from his thigh strain as he sailed through to the second round of the Australian Open with a 6-4, 6-3, 7-5 win over local hope James Duckworth on Monday. The first meeting between the 17-time Grand Slam champion, a winner at Melbourne Park in 2009, and Australian wildcard Duckworth, who is ranked 238 in the world, always had the potential to be an uneven contest.
The second-seeded Spaniard had pulled out of the Brisbane warmup with a thigh strain to raise doubts about his campaign but he allayed those fears on Rod Laver Arena against an error-prone opponent. The Spaniard, who will next meet the winner of Australian Matthew Ebden’s contest with Jan-Lennard Struff of Germany, broke Duckworth six times while surrendering his serve twice and brought an end to the match with a brilliant crosscourt winner.
Former champion Maria Sharapova gave hapless Harriet Dart a 6-0, 6-0 shellacking to fly into the second round of the Australian Open on Monday and had no words of comfort to offer the British qualifier after leaving her in tears. In the opening match on Rod Laver Arena, the 30th seeded Russian was all over the 131st-ranked Dart from the first point and wrapped up the match in little more than an hour after a ruthless barrage of power hitting. The centre court humiliation had Dart weeping as she beat a hasty exit and Sharapova had little sympathy for the 22-year-old after her nightmare debut at Melbourne Park.
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