
Courtesy: Google
On Sunday, January 12, the first day of the Australian Open Grand Slam, Indian tennis star Sumit Nagal, who is the only player from his country to play singles in the tournament, lost to Tomas Machac of Czechia in straight sets. In quite a one-sided contest, world number 25 Machac was too tough a competitor for Nagal to play against, and he was defeated with a scoreline of 6-3, 6-1, 7-5 in favour of the Czech international in two hours and five minutes at the Melbourne Park.
After losing just two points on his first three service games in the first set, Sumit Nagal, the world number 91, wasn’t able to continue the momentum in the key stage, allowing Tomas Machac to break his serve in the seventh game before losing the set 3-6. In the opening game of the second set, Nagal had the golden opportunity to break Machac’s serve, who managed to hold on to it before dominating his way to 6-1, securing a two-set lead.
Sumit Nagal fought hard in third set but Thomas Machac took it 7-5
The third set between the two players was quite a competitive one with Sumit Nagal breaking Tomas Machac’s serve for the first time in the match in the second game before taking a 3-0 lead. Although the rest of the set firmly belonged to Machac, who broke Nagal’s serve twice in seventh and ninth games, to clinch the third set 7-5 and the match in straight sets.
In another prominent match from the men’s singles at the Australian Open, Norwegian Casper Ruud had to battle for five sets before he managed to defeat Spaniard Jaume Munar at the Melbourne Park. Rudd secured his spot in the second round of the first Grand Slam of the year on the fourth straight occasion after getting the better of Munar with a scoreline of 6-3, 1-6, 7-5, 2-6, 6-1, to potentially take on Czech teenager Jakub Mensik or Georgian qualifier Nikoloz Basilashvili in the second round.
The women’s singles draw has seen the world number one Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus and Paula Badosa of Spain make it through to the second round of the Australian Open in straight sets.