Rafael Nadal powered into the third round with a straight set victory over Leonardo Mayer of Argentina in the day session. The second seeded woman, Caroline Wozniacki and French veteran, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga survived threats of upset.
The 21-year old player from Croatia, Jana Fett (ranked 119 in the world) won the first set 6-3 but the second seed rallied to take the second set 6-2. In the third set, Caroline lost her service game twice and her opponent stepped up to serve for the match, leading 5-1.
The score was 40-15 and the stadium crowd braced up for a major upset. On the first match-point, Fett missed her first serve and double-faulted twice to lose the game. It was downhill thereafter, as Wozniacki took the next six games for a come-back victory.
The highly talented southpaw from Canada, Denis Shapovalov won the frist set 6-3. Tsonga took the next two sets quickly and had the chance to close out the match in the fourth set which went into a tie break taken by the Canadian in the close scores of 7 points to 4. In the deciding fifth set, Denis served first and held.
Tsonga suffered a break of serve. Serving for the set and match in the ninth game, the Canadian was broken. With momentum shifted his way, Tsonga held serve to level at 5-all. Shapovalov lost the last two games. He will remember that match for a long time.
In the first set of their match in Road Laver Arena, Nadal broke Mayer’s serve in the fourth game and consolidated to lead 4-1 lead. The gap remained till the end of the set. In the second set, Mayer lost the opening game on his serve and Nadal jumped to a 2-0 lead. That singular break enabled Nadal clinch the set at 6-4. The lanky Argentinean regained his service rhythm and Nadal had problems with his deliveries off a sky high toss. Only in the fifth game was Leonardo extended to deuce. Nadal put up a titanic struggle to hold and level 3 games apiece.
Serving with new balls, Leonardo hammered three aces and clinched the game with a forced error on Nadal’s forehand. Nadal held serve and secured a break to lead 5-4 with the opportunity to serve for the match.
However, Mayer broke Nadal’s serve and held to lead 6-5. Nadal was ruthless in winning the twelfth game at love. The second seed took the opening point of the tiebreak but Mayer leveled at 1-all. After an exchange of service points, Nadal lead 4-2 at the change-over and won three points to set 7-6.In his career, only twice did Rafael lose any match in which he was leading two sets to love.
