TENNIS: US OPEN:CAROLINE WOZNIACKI, the women's world number one, provided a glimpse of the ruthless streak her critics have accused her of lacking, demolishing unseeded Spaniard Nuria Llagostera Vives 6-3 6-1 in the first round at Flushing Meadows yesterday.
The Dane, who has been in the headlines as much for her relationship with Rory McIlroy as her performances on court, smashed 22 winners in a lopsided victory that took just 80 minutes.
It was as impressive a start to the tournament as anyone has made so far but Wozniacki was still forced to defend herself.
A finalist in New York two years ago, she is still chasing her first Grand Slam title, giving her doubters all the ammunition they need.
“They can say what they want,” she snarled. “I’ve won a lot of tournaments. I’m number one in the world. There are a lot of things to my game I can still improve, but everyone can. I’m on the right track.”
David Ferrer and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga had little trouble reaching the second round but Mikhail Youzhny, a semi-finalist last year, was beaten in straight sets by Ernests Gulbis.
The 23-year-old has long been tipped as a future star of the game without ever living up to the hype but there have been signs recently that could be about to change.
Gulbis, a member of one of Latvia’s wealthier families, won the ATP World Tour event in Los Angeles last month and reached the third round of the Masters event in Montreal to climb back to 53rd in the world rankings.
In contrast Youzhny, the 16th seed, lost his first matches in Montreal and Cincinnati and will lose big ranking points in comparison to last year’s run, where he beat John Isner and Stanislas Wawrinka before going down to Rafael Nadal.
Gulbis got off to the perfect start today with two early breaks and Youzhny simply could not recover, the Russian eventually losing 6-2 6-4 6-4.
Fifth seed Ferrer also made a bad start and was 4-0 down to Russia’s Igor Andreev but once the Spaniard got going he did not look back, powering to a 2-6 6-3 6-0 6-4 victory.
Eleventh seed Tsonga, fresh from wins over Roger Federer in the quarter-finals at Wimbledon and in Montreal, is considered a dark horse for the title and he was impressive in a 6-4 6-4 6-4 win over Lu Yen-hsun.
As a former champion and a sweetheart of the New York crowds, Maria Sharapova was given the honour of being one of the first players on Arthur Ashe centre court and, as expected, the Russian made it through to the next round.
But her 3-6 7-5 6-3 win over British teenager Heather Watson was an unconvincing performance from the former world number one, who won last week’s lead-up event in Cincinnati.
Watson won the junior title two years ago and was making her first appearance in the senior draw but she was able to frustrate and torment the more experienced Sharapova for more than two and a half hours before she finally succumbed.
Switzerland’s five-time champion Roger Federer, the third seed, easily won his first round match against Colombia’s Santiago Giraldo 6-4 6-3 6-2.
Federer’s win was his 224th in grand slams, moving him to equal second with Andre Agassi. Jimmy Connors holds the all-time record for men with 233 wins.
