Defending champion Sofia Kenin is out of the Australian Open within the second spherical after a 6-3, 6-2 loss to Kaia Kanepi.
After her first-round win, Kenin talked about how nervous she was because the defending champion at a significant for the primary time.
Against Kanepi, she seemed it. She was close to tears throughout a changeover towards the top of the match.
The Sixty fifth-ranked Kanepi was hardly an underdog: she had crushed Kenin of their solely earlier match and is a six-time Grand Slam quarterfinalist. The Australian Open is the one Slam the place Kanepi has not reached the quarterfinals.
The fourth-seeded Kenin solely had 10 winners within the match, whereas committing 22 unforced errors.
The defending #AusOpen champion goes down.
Kaia Kanepi pulls the Round 2 upset of Sofia Kenin. pic.twitter.com/t7gofjUvER
— US Open Tennis (@usopen) February 11, 2021
Top-seeded Ash Barty dropped a number of extra factors in her second-round match on the Australian Open than her first, however the consequence was nonetheless the identical.
Barty adopted up her 6-0, 6-0 drubbing of Danka Kovinic within the first spherical with a a lot tighter 6-1, 7-6 (7) win over fellow Australian Daria Gavrilova.
After dropping simply 10 factors in opposition to Kovinic, Barty was far much less constant in opposition to Gavrilova, racking up 34 unforced errors.
Barty’s serve was a selected drawback: she was damaged 4 occasions, together with when serving for the match at 5-4 within the second set.
Former No. 1 Karolina Pliskova advances to the third spherical on the Australian Open by beating American Danielle Collins, a semifinalist at Melbourne Park in 2019, 7-5, 6-2.
Pliskova, seeded sixth, misplaced serve twice in a seesaw first set however pulled it out after which pulled away. She completed with seven aces.
Pliskova has gained 65 matches in Grand Slams however continues to be searching for her first main title. She was runner-up to Angelique Kerber on the 2016 U.S. Open.
American Shelby Rogers advances to the third spherical on the Australian Open for the primary time by beating qualifier Olga Danilovic 6-2, 6-3.
Rogers hit seven aces and misplaced solely three factors on her first serve.
She got here into the event with a profession document of 1-4 in Melbourne, however at age 28 her fortunes have been on the rise. She reached the quarterfinals on the U.S. Open for the primary time final September, and her year-end rating was a career-best No. 58.
Day 4 at Melbourne Park options the No. 1 girls’s participant on the earth and the 2020 singles champion in temperatures that are anticipated to be the most popular of the primary week.
The climate forecast is for largely sunny skies and a excessive temperature of 33 levels Celsius, or 91 levels Fahrenheit.
American 16-year-old Coco Gauff takes on fifth-seeded Elina Svitolina, a two-time Australian Open quarterfinalist, within the opening night time match at Rod Laver Arena.
Another American, Michael Mmoh, can have a fair more durable process, enjoying No. 2 Rafael Nadal. The Spanish lefthander is trying to win a males’s-record twenty first Grand Slam singles title.
Divij, Ankita bow out Australian Open doubles with respective companions
India’s Divij Sharan and Ankita Raina crashed out of the Australian Open males’s and girls’s doubles occasions respectively, after struggling straight set defeats within the opening spherical right here on Thursday.
Ankita, the third Indian lady tennis participant to safe a spot in the primary draw of a Grand Slam occasion, and her accomplice Mihaela Buzarnecu of Romania misplaced 3-6 0-6 in only one hour and 17 minutes by the hands of Australian wild card pair of Olivia Gadecki and Belinda Woolcock.
India’s problem additionally ended within the males’s doubles competitors after Divij and his
Slovakian accomplice Igor Zelenay misplaced 1-6 4-6 in opposition to the German mixture of Yannick Hanfmann Kevin Krawietz within the first spherical match that lasted one hour and 4 minutes.
On Wednesday, the opposite Indian in males’s doubles occasion, Rohan Bopanna and Japan’s Ben McLachlan bowed out within the opening spherical after a 4-6 6-7(0) defeat to the Korean wild card pair of Ji Sung Nam and Min-Kyu Song.
The veteran Bopanna, nonetheless, nonetheless has an opportunity to make amends as he’ll accomplice China’s Yingying Duan within the combined doubles and can be up in opposition to the pair of American Bethanie Mattek-Sands and United Kingdom’s Jamie Murray within the first spherical.
