Watson takes positives from Oz experience despite an early exit
HEATHER Watson loves playing at the Australian Open but left Melbourne Park in frustration after going down 7-5, 7-6 to Kazakhstan’s Yulia Putintseva in the first round.
Watson had her chances to level the match in the second set, but struggled to hit enough winners against her feisty opponent.
Although the 25-year-old fought back well to lead 4-1 in the second set, Putintseva proved a gutsy competitor.
The world No 54, who is ranked 14 places above Watson, kept making her opponent play the extra ball before capitalising on her regular mistakes.
Putintseva fought back to level at 4-4 in the second set and then broke again to take a 6-5 lead.
Watson hung on, breaking back in the following game as Putintseva served for the match, and the Briton had her chances in the tie-break.
Watson led 5-3 and had a set point at 6-5, but three points later Putintseva secured her victory.
“I definitely felt like I was the aggressor, but my balls just didn’t have enough on them,” Watson said.
“To her credit I thought she did really well to make a lot of balls, but I just don’t feel that I played very well today.
“I was just doing the same thing. She seemed to know where I was going to hit the ball every single time.
“I felt I made a lot more mistakes than winners.”
Watson reached the semi-finals in Hobart last week and has at least got some matches under her belt in the first month of the season.
“I’m feeling quite negative after the match today because I’m just not really happy with it, but I have to take positives,” she said when asked to sum up her Australian summer.
“I’ve had a lot of matches at the beginning of the year, which is good, and the first round of a Grand Slam is always tough.
“I can’t just look at today. I need to look at the weeks before as well.”
World number one Simona Halep had a tricky time against 17-year-old Australian wild card Destanee Aiava.
Aiava led 5-2 and forced two set points despite taking a medical time-out when she grew so anxious she started hyperventilating. But Halep fought back to take the opening set on a tiebreak and looked like she had ridden the storm.
However, in the second game of the second set she rolled her left ankle and, although she emerged an ultimately comfortable 7-6 (7/5) 6-1 winner, Halep must now no hope there are no repercussions for her second-round match with Eugenie Bouchard.
She said: “I just want to wait for tomorrow, to see how I wake up. From my experience, I feel that is nothing broken, but the pain was big.”
Bouchard has slumped to 112th in the rankings but ended a six-match losing run by beating Oceane Dodin.
There were also wins for top10 players Garbine Muguruza, Karolina Pliskova, Caroline Garcia and Johanna Konta but Petra Kvitova was beaten 6-3 4-6 10-8 by Andrea Petkovic.