Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic ease into third round of Australian Open
Roger Federer arrived at the Australian Open without having played a single match in 2020, meaning that he would have to play himself into form at the first slam of the year. On Wednesday Federer continued on the right track as he moved into the third round with a 6-1, 6-4, 6-1 victory over Filip Krajinovic.
Any rust still enveloping Federer’s game was not visible under the lights of Rod Laver Arena as he raced to a 5-0 lead in 15 minutes and maintained his level for three sets. Perhaps most importantly, he overcame a challenging second set to see out the win.
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“I’m very happy, it’s a great start to the season so far,” he said. “I’m feeling really relaxed out on court. You train hard and you hope it pays off and not that it was all for nothing this week. I’m happy, I’m still going.”
After leading his team to the ATP Cup title in the second week of the year, Novak Djokovic is certainly not undercooked in 2020. The defending champion eased past Tatsuma Ito 6-1, 6-4, 6-2 and into the third round.
Djokovic’s display highlighted one of his most underrated improvements in recent years: his serve. The defending champion won 93% of points on his first serve and his second serve speed has also increased significantly. Last year he averaged around 96mph compared to 105mph on Wednesday.
“That’s something I worked on in the off-season,” he said. “That’s one of the priorities I guess of the training sessions, trying to get that I think advantage of winning a lot of easy points on the first serve.”
Elsewhere, the eighth seed Matteo Berrettini fell 7-6(7), 6-4, 4-6, 2-6, 7-5 to Tennys Sandgren of the United States and the 18th seed Grigor Dimitrov was upset 6-4, 7-6(6), 3-6, 6-7(3), 7-6(10-3) by the 22-year-old American Tommy Paul.
Alexander Zverev, who has been struggling on and off the court lately, said donating the $A4.12m winner’s cheque from the Australian Open would make him the “happiest person on the planet”.
The 23-year-old German, who has earned more than $US20m in his short career but is yet to win a slam, said after making it through to the second round, “I’ve said it a lot of times, I’m not a money-driven person.”
“I play the sport because I absolutely love it. I play the sport because I enjoy playing on big stadium courts, I enjoy playing the toughest matches in front of an amazing crowd.
“If I win the Australian Open I will be the happiest person on the planet. I think that the $4m will be in much better use in the hands that know what to do with it, and know how to help others.”
