AO Day 1: Just Another Manic Monday

The Australian Open is a bit difficult to watch. While their afternoon session fits right into prime time viewing here in the West Coast, their night session of course falls right in the middle of the night. So naturally I fell asleep in the middle of the Roger Federer-Ricky Lu match, but it sounds like I didn’t much of anything besides Roger’s greatness. No surprise there.

So even though it’s Monday morning right as I’m typing this, Monday just happened in Melbourne — yet another idiosyncrasy of the tournament. It’s like time traveling, right?

Ladies seeds falling: It was a manic day on the women’s side. Here are the ladies seeds that fell on Day 1:

5. Ana Ivanovic
9. Angelique Kerber
16. Lucie Safarova
17. Carla Suarez Navarro
23. Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova
27. Svetlana Kuznetsova
28. Sabine Lisicki
32. Belinda Bencic

It probably would have been easier to list the seeds who actually won. I wrote yesterday that the women’s side of the draw is very deep and that it’s a crapshoot. Add to the fact that this is the first slam at the very beginning of the year, you have a perfect breeding ground for these upsets.

Rafael Nadal: I really thought he would have trouble with Mikhail Youzhny in the first round. I thought it would be an entertaining match. Wrong wrong wrong. It was a boring 6-3, 6-2, 6-2 win for Nadal who showed that he could run down damn near anything. Perhaps even more notable was is fashion:

Rafa Nadal
(Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)

He went against the grain with the pink top, but notably he wore shortish-shorts. They’re not quite short-shorts that I would like to wear, but they were shorter than normal. Sort of a midi-short maybe?

Highlighter yellow: I should have seen this coming since I did watch some of the tuneup tournaments heading into Melbourne, but the men’s fashion color du fortnight is apparently highlighter yellow. It’s like the Baylor men’s basketball team went crazy with the dye. Take the young Aussie lad Thanasi Kokkinakis:

Thanasi Kokkinakis
Screengrab from ESPN/Australian Open

Speaking of Kokkinakis, I am currently watching his five-set win over the 11-seed Ernests Gulbis.

Christina McHale: Talk about a gutty win, McHale overcame an aching shoulder and throwing up twice in the third set to beat the French veteran Stephanie Foretz 12-10 in the third set. Of course, Deadspin grabbed the video.

This is going to be a fun fortnight.