Australian Open Day 1

Written by: Sven Groeneveld on 17th January 2011

Australian Open Day 1 |

We have officially started the tournament and the first slam of the year! The question is of course, is Rafa going to get his Rafa slam and everything else besides that is still up in the air!

The men are focused on The Big 4 but in the women it is open draw and it will just depend on who can overcome the hurdles of the first round and nerves! The key for Caroline is to remain focused during those early matches!

The weather is holding but it was very cloudy this morning and the roof on Rod Laver was partially closed during the warm-up, at 10, this morning with Caroline!

As Caroline is the number 1 seed she does get a lot of attention and with it comes expectations and pressure! She is at great strength and well prepared! Today she overcame herself more than her opponent as she won in a shaky but confident 2 set victory over Dulko who actually is a very dangerous player (especially in the early rounds for the high seeds).

This morning we also had to juggle the practices of Morita, Cirstea and Kirilenko and because they did not want to go off site they ended up doing a half an hour outside and the remainder (about 45 min) indoors!

The reason for this is the avoid that extra travel and going back and forth between site, practice site and hotel! Energy needs to be saved and they are all well prepared for the challenges ahead!

After the match we had some lunch and went to watch the match of Daniela Hantuchova (unfortunately she lost 9-7 in the 3rd) and to scout the next opponent of Caroline (king or Paszek)!

The schedule also came out and we will have 3 matches to prepare for and schedule into our agenda’s tomorrow: warm-ups for Kirilenko, Cirstea and Morita plus an hour of training with Caroline!

I have never seen so many people on the first day of the event and I am sure they have broken another record this year!

(Maybe Fred has some pics to share with us as well!)

Topics: Caroline Wozniacki, Rafael Nadal, sven groeneveld

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