Melbourne: Rafael Nadal honed some of the weapons he aims to use to end Roger Federer's domination at the Australian Open.
Serena Williams showed touches of the form that helped her to the last Australian Open title and a 25-1 record dating back to 2003 at Melbourne Park.
Each won their second-round matches in straight sets on Wednesday without much trouble.
Top-ranked Justine Henin had a little more difficulty reaching the third round in her first Australian Open since defaulting the 2006 final, dropping serve three times en route to her 30th consecutive win.
Nadal, the perennial men's No. 2, had 6-0, 6-2, 6-2 win over Frenchman Florent Serra.
He made the third round in his debut in 2004, the fourth round in '05 and, after missing a year, made the quarter-finals last year.
Now he wants to up the ante.
Against Serra, he displayed some of the shots he hopes will help him end Federer's dominance at every Grand Slam not played on clay.
Nadal is the only player to beat top-ranked Federer in the last 10 Grand Slams - in the finals at Roland Garros the last two years.
His heavy slice and topspin that work so well on clay are well suited to the new, blue Plexicushion surface at Melbourne Park, which seems to be slower-paced and not as spongy as the old Rebound Ace.
He yielded only 10 points while racing through the first set in 22 minutes, committing just four unforced errors.
Nadal's retrieving skills often left Serra muttering to himself and he had no answer in the last game when the 21-year-old Spaniard set up triple-match point with a backhand winner and closed with an ace, his ninth.
"Yeah, very happy," Nadal said. "I'm trying to play a bit more aggressive and definitely serving better, which is good."
With a strong US contingent waving American flags in Vodafone Arena, Williams was clearly the aggressor in a 6-3, 6-1 win over Meng Yuan of China.
She repeatedly psyched herself up with shouts of "Come on!" as her sister, Venus, watched at courtside with their mother.
PAGE_BREAK
Yuan won her own share of fans with her feistiness and refusal to give up on every point.
She was nearly flawless in the first set with only one unforced error, and broke Williams twice, but still was overwhelmed by the American's power on key points.
Williams ran off the last four games, breaking Yuan with a backhand crosscourt passing shot on match point that the Chinese player let drop, only to see it clip the line.
Williams finished with 35 winners to 18 unforced errors but had trouble with her first serve in the wind, getting only 51 per cent into play.
"It's always exciting to win," Williams said. "I'll never stop fighting. I really enjoy the battle."
Henin, who skipped Melbourne last year because she was going through a divorce and had to default in the 2006 final because of a stomach illness, needed four match points to clinch a 6-1, 7-5 win over Russia's Olga Poutchkova.
She was broken at love when serving for the match at 5-3.
Henin set up double match point with a curling forehand winner in the next game, but Poutchkova ran off four points to level at 5-all.
That's when Henin shifted gears.
She held at love for 6-5 and then, with Poutchkova only a point from forcing a tiebreaker, won four straight points to finish.
"I played a very good first set, then I lost some intensity," Henin said. "She took her chances. It was tough at the end."
The defending French and US Open champion next faces 25th-seeded Francesca Schiavone of Italy.
Amelie Mauresmo, who won when Henin pulled out of the 2006 final, needed 10 match points to beat Yaroslava Shvedova of Russia, and Nicole Vaidisova ended the run of Australia's Alicia Molik 6-2, 6-3.
Another Australian went through, though, with Casey Dellacqu upsetting 2004 semi-finalist Patty Schnyder 4-6, 7-5, 8-6.
Unseeded Mardy Fish ousted No. 11 Tommy Robredo 6-1, 5-2, 6-3, but two other Americans were eliminated when Jesse Levine lost to No. 24 Jarkko Nieminen and Sam Warburg went down to Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, who followed his upset over No. 9 Andy Murray by hitting 54 winners and 14 aces in a 6-4, 7-6 (4), 6-2 win on Wednesday.
PAGE_BREAK
No. 14 Mikhail Youzhny, No. 20 Ivo Karlovic and No. 23 Paul-Henri Mathieu also advanced.
No. 5 Maria Sharapova, last year's losing finalist, had the toughest second-round match of the highly ranked players, facing three-time major winner Lindsay Davenport in the night match.
Davenport is 19-1 with three titles since returning to the tour following the birth last June of her son, Jagger.
Venus Williams was injured last year and had to watch from afar like Davenport and Henin.
The Wimbledon champion played her first match in three years at the Australian Open on Tuesday night, hitting 29 unforced errors and only 19 winners in a 6-2, 7-5 win over China's Yan Zi.
"Errors happen," Williams said. "That's tennis."
Federer took the opposite approach, barely giving Argentina's Diego Hartfield a free point in a 6-0. 6-3, 6-0 win to start his bid for a third straight Australian Open title.
Federer hadn't played a competitive match in two months. He withdrew from the Kooyong exhibition last week after being told by doctors he had food poisoning, causing speculation about his fitness.
Sick and tired of talk about his stomach bug, he wanted to show he was in Grand Slam form.
"I'm 100 per cent OK," said Federer, who is 26-1 in the last four Australian Opens. "I could have maybe played on Saturday, but I didn't want all the fuss - the media, analysing my game, thinking they know best and all that."
Just before Federer went on court, things turned violent among spectators during a match between Greece's Konstantinos Economidis and seventh-seeded Fernando Gonzalez of Chile, last year's losing finalist.
Tournament officials said play was interrupted for five minutes while police subdued three people with pepper spray. Five were evicted and three were banned from the rest of the tournament.
Comments
0 comment