Tennis - Australian Open:Ireland's Louk Sorensen defied the odds to reach the second round of the Australian Open in the early hours of this morning. Sorensen will now face number 33 seed John Isner for a place in the next round.
Making his grand slam debut after coming through last week’s qualifying competition, the 25-year-old Sorensen produced an assured display against Yen-Hsun Lu of Chinese Tapei to progress in four sets, 6-4, 3-6, 6-2, 6-1.
The result saw Sorensen become the first Irishman to win a grand slam singles match since 1984 when Matt Doyle beat Sandy Mayer at Wimbledon.
"I don't know what's going on right now," he said afterwards. "I've suddenly got so many friend requests on Facebook."
Before today’s breakthrough win, Sorensen was best known as the son of Seán Sorenson, the current captain of the Irish Davis Cup team, who played in the first round of Wimbledon in 1977, losing to Rod Laver.
He was raised in Germany and although his parents have since returned to Dublin, Sorensen remains in Stuttgart, training and playing in the German tennis league's third division.
"The money's good," he explained. "And I can be the number one player."
Sorensen has won tournaments on the Challenger and Futures Circuit but had to go through the qualifying competition for the Australian Open because his ranking (284) was too low for an automatic place.
Sorensen's second round match against Isner, ranked 28th in the world, will take place in the early hours of tomorrow morning and presents a whole new challenge.
"I'm feeling great, it's the biggest achievement of my career so far," he said. "I think it was an advantage to come through the qualifiers because I was used to the courts.
"The level between the qualifiers and the main draw, there is not such a big difference. You just need a bit of luck."
Elsewhere, there were wins for world number ones Roger Federer and Serena Williams when they made their first appearances in Melbourne.
The unseasonal rain that washed out most of Monday's matches gave way to brilliant sunshine but the two world number ones were still caught in their own personal storms.
Federer survived a real scare from Russia's Igor Andreev before winning his opening match 4-6 6-2 7-6 6-0, while Williams had a much easier time in beating Poland's Urszula Radwanska 6-2 6-1 but could not resist lashing out at the officials who fined her at the US Open.
French Open finalist Robin Soderling was the only major casualty on a day when most of the leading players all won.
The tournament's organisers scheduled almost 90 singles matches after the foul weather ruined the opening day and a record 45,494 spectators crammed into Melbourne Park.
Williams hardly broke sweat as she opened her title defence with a comfortable win on the Rod Laver Arena, extending her perfect record of never losing in the first round of a grand slam, but saved her best shots for the post-match news conference.
Still bristling after being fined for her outburst in New York, the American maintained her belief that she had been unfairly treated in comparison to other players.
"I don't know whoever got fined like that. People said worse, done worse. I think it was a bit much," she said.
Federer has spent the past week dismissing the notion that his motivation was waning after a year in which he won the French Open for the first time, broke Pete Sampras' record of 14 grand slam titles and became a father for the first time.
By his own standards, his first round performance was well below his best, doing little to silence the doubters as he struggled to find away past Andreev.
The Russian, whose girlfriend Maria Kirilenko beat Maria Sharapova on Monday, won the opening set and missed three set points in the third set that would have given him a 2-1 lead.
"I knew it was going to be tough. I really had to adjust my game to beat him," Federer said. "I was very lucky in the third set. It was a tough first round and I'm really, really relieved to get away with it.”
Soderling, who has been battling injury, joined Sharapova in making an early exit when he was beaten by Spain's Marcel Granollers 5-7 2-6 6-4 6-4 6-2.
Russia's in-form Nikolay Davydenko then showed why he is looming as one of Federer's biggest threats for the title when he dismantled German qualifier Dieter Kindlmann 6-1 6-0 6-3.
Davydenko, who beat Federer and Rafa Nadal at last year's ATP Tours Final and again at Doha in the leadup to the Australian Open, is hoping his low public profile will help him slip quietly through the draw.
"I am not Paris Hilton," he said. "I don't want to be like this. I don't want to be like Nadal, Federer. These guys I never see by breakfast. They stay in the room and take room service."
