Anderson bows out of Australian Open
South Africa's premier tennis star Kevin Anderson has been knocked out of the Australian Open after the first round, losing in straight sets to Italian Matteo Berrettini on Tuesday.
It was always going to be a tough draw for Anderson who was up against the ninth seeded Italian star and a hard-fought first set tie-break could have flipped the contest in his favour. He went down 11-9 in the breaker and then lost the next two sets 7-5 and 6-3.
The first set was primed for the taking for the 81st ranked Anderson who missed out on converting eight set points only to concede to Berrettini after being 6-3 to the good in the tie-break.
Anderson's fellow South African in the draw Lloyd Harris had to recover from a set down against Mikael Torpegaard.
Harris dropped the first set 4-6 but rallied back to win the next three 6-3 6-2 6-2.
He will now face wild card local Alexei Popyrin in the second round at Melbourne Park.
It's going to be an exciting showdown given that Popyrin upset 13th seed David Goffin in five sets to book his spot in the second round.
Looking at the bottom of the men's draw there were no problems for second seed Rafael Nadal. He coasted past Lazlo Djere in straight sets despite being under an injury cloud coming into the year's first grand slam.
There were also no problems for Stefanos Tsitsipas or Daniel Medvedev on day two in Melbourne.
In the women's draw first seed Ashleigh Barty blew Danka Kovinic out the water with a 6-0 6-0 demolition on the Rod Laver Arena.
Barty needed 44 minutes and dropped just ten points in the entire match to sound a stern warning to the rest of the draw.
Fourth seed and defending women's champion Sofia Kenin is through to the second round after a 7-5 6-4 win over Australian wildcard Maddison Inglis.
