Federer gets off to shaky start in Australia
Top-seeded Roger Federer has won his opening match at the Australian Open in a struggle, beating Russia’s Igor Andreev 4-6, 6-2, 7-6 (2), 6-0.
Federer had a few anxious moments on Tuesday, losing the first set after having his service broken in the ninth game, then having to save three set points in the 12th game of the third set before winning the tiebreaker and dominating the fourth set.
“I hoped I was going to hang in there, that he was going to get tired. It was a tough first round. I’m really, really relieved,” Federer said. “I think I definitely got lucky to get out of that one. It was a fortunate third set today.”
Federer hasn’t lost the opening round since the 2003 French Open, the event before he won Wimbledon for the first of his record 15 grand slam singles titles.
Of the four other Swiss playing in Melbourne, on Tuesday 19th-seeded Stanislas Wawrinka beat Guillermo Garcia-Lopez from Spain 6-3, 6-3, 6-2 and Marco Chiudinelli beat Marinko Matosevic from Australia 7-6 (7), 7-6 (3), 4-6, 6-3.
Timea Bacsinszky lost to Austria’s Yvonne Meusburger 6-4, 4-6, 6-2 on Monday. Stefanie Vögele beat Melinda Czink from Hungary 7-5, 6-7 (5), 9-7 on Wednesday.
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