AO: Roger Through to the Second Round

Top seed Roger Federer, began his 2007 Grand Slam Journey in a great fashion beating German Bjorn Phau 7-5, 6-0, 6-4 and clouded away all the doubts raised after his Saturday defeat to Andy Roddic. (Who raised the doubts BTW?)

After a patchy start in the first set, the Swiss Maestro managed to keep his nerves. In the Second set, Federer put a bagel on an edgy Bjorn and won the third set to register a straight win.

Andy Roddick too, advanced to the next round beating French wild-card Jo-Wilfred Tsonga in the marathon opening tiebreaker and rallying from 2-5 in the second set to win 6-7 (18), 7-6 (2), 6-3, 6-3.

In women's, Amelie Mauresmo started her title defense with a 6-3, 6-4 victory over Shenay Perry.

Other important results are as follows. (Courtsy: NDTV)

Seventh-seeded Elena Dementieva of Russia advanced 6-1, 6-2 over Stephanie
Foretz of France.
No. 16 Shahar Peer, No 20 Tatiana Golovin and No 26 Maria Kirilenko also
advanced to the Second Rounds

No 18 Richard Gasquet, the 2002 world junior champion, won his first match
in four trips to the Australian Open, advancing 6-4, 6-4, 6-2 over Italian
Filippo Volandri.
Ninth-seeded Ancic beat Japan's Go Soeda 6-4, 6-3, 6-2.

Spaniards Juan Carlos Ferrero and Guillermo Garcia-Lopez progressed to the
second round as well. Former top-ranked Ferrero, was leading Jan Hajek 3-0
when the Czech player retired because of stomach illness. Garcia-Lopez was 1-1
with Joachim Johansson when the 6-foot-6 Swede pulled out because of severe
blisters on his feet.

Sania Rising High

After a semi-final appearance at last week's Moorilla International in Hobart, Indian tennis star Sania Mirza has jumped 13 places to 53 in the latest WTA rankings.
The 20-year-old Sania had beaten world number 29 Maria Kirilenko en route to the semis.
However, she's is down one place to 25 in the doubles ranking though.

Sania's AO journey will begin from tomorrow, with a first round match against Olga Savchuk of Ukrain. Come On Sania!

Australian Open to start tomorrow:

Two weeks from tomorrow,

Melbourne will be again on toes to cheer the game os Tennis...

Two weeks from tomorrow,

The Players will toil hard to perform on the heated Courts in the City...

The year’s first Grand Slam Tournament is back again!

Roger Federer and Maria Sharapova are Men’s and Women’s Top Seeds respectively, while Sania Mirza will try to improve her record Down Under.

Well, the Matches will be shown Live on Star Sports in India and I don’t want to miss the fabulous Commentary by my favorite duo, Alan Wilkins and with him, the One and only- Vijay Amritraj… and I don’t want to miss it.

So Good Night!