Strong start
Nadal begins Rio Open title defence with straight-sets win
RIO DE JANEIRO: World No.3 Rafael Nadal made an impressive return to competition after an Australian Open quarter-final loss, dispatching Brazil’s Thomaz Bellucci 6-4, 6-1 on Tuesday at the ATP Rio Open.
Defending champion Nadal, a 14-time Grand Slam champion, needed only 91 minutes in advancing to a second-round match-up today against Spanish compatriot Pablo Carreno Busta.
In the host city for next year’s Olympics, 2008 Beijing Olympic gold medal winner Nadal improved to 15-0 on Brazilian soil, having won titles at Costa do Sauipe in 2005, Sao Paulo in 2013 and Rio last year.
The 28-year-old left-hander began his 2015 season in Doha, where he lost in the first round while defending his title. At the Australian Open, Nadal saw a 17-match win streak against Tomas Berdych end with a surprise exit.
Nadal, elevated his play in the second set of his first match on the surface since last June’s Grand Slam final victory over Novak Djokovic.
Bellucci’s third double-fault of the match handed Nadal a break after five prior missed chances for a 3-2 lead, but the Brazilian broke back in the next game to level the opening set.
Top seed Nadal and 64th-ranked Bellucci exchanged breaks in the next two games before Nadal broke again for a 5-4 edge and held to take the first set after 51 minutes on a service winner.
Nadal broke to start the second set and broke again at love for a 3-0 edge, taking 14 of the first 20 points contested, and held twice for a 5-1 edge.
On Nadal’s third match point chance of the seventh game, Bellucci hit a forehand long to surrender the break and the match, falling in the first round for the fourth time in five events this year.
Nadal went 25-3 on clay last year and won three titles on the surface. He has the best claycourt record in the Open Era at 318-24, including 45-7 in career claycourt finals.
In Delray Beach, Australia’s Marinko Matosevic upset US second seed John Isner 6-4, 6-4 to reach the second round of the ATP Delray Beach Open.
Isner, who won all three prior meetings with the Bosnian-born Aussie last year, fired 16 aces in a losing cause, surrendering a service break in each set while squandering all three of his own chances.
Matosevic, ranked 78th and seeking his second ATP final after a 2012 runner-up effort here, booked a second-round date with Japanese qualifier Yoshihito Nishioka, who defeated Dutchman Igor Sijsling 7-5, 6-1.
South African top seed Kevin Anderson ousted Aussie John-Patrick Smith 6-3, 6-3 to book a second-round meeting with Taiwan’s Lu Yen-hsun, who eliminated Aussie Sam Groth 6-7 (6/8), 7-6 (7/5), 6-4.
Two other Aussies advanced, with Bernard Tomic eliminating Tunisia’s Malek Jaziri 6-3, 6-3 and qualifier Thanasi Kokkinakis downing Serbia’s Filip Krajinovic 6-2, 6-3.
Tomic next faces Serbian eighth seed Viktor Troicki, who outlasted France’s Stephane Robert 6-7 (3/7), 7-5, 6-1, while Kokkinakis will meet Croatian fourth seed Ivo Karlovic.
US sixth seed Sam Querrey was forced to withdraw with a sore back while leading Colombia’s Alejandro Gonzalez 6-3, 1-2.
“I had a sudden movement at the net and kind of jerked my back a little bit,” Querrey said. “It’s an injury that I felt before, but never on a specific motion like this. My lower back just kind of tightened up and I can’t really move it in any direction.”
Gonzalez will next face American Donald Young, who followed up his semifinal run from last week in Memphis by defeating Croatia’s Ivan Dodig 7-5, 7-5.