Osaka and Serena react to easy wins as Kerber blames hard quarantine for exit

Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka made roaring starts to their Australian Open campaigns but fellow former champion Angelique Kerber was the biggest early casualty in the women’s singles draw.

Wiilliams and Osaka dropped just five games between them in their opening matches at Melbourne Park, despite testing draws on paper.

Williams, the 23-time Grand Slam champion from the USA, thrashed Germany’s Laura Siegemund, a player who has been as high as 27 in the world rankings, 6-1 6-1.

The seven-time Australian Open winner, 39, withdrew from her Yarra Valley Classic semi-final against Ash Barty due to a shoulder problem but showed few signs of concern, despite admitting to feeling more ‘comfortable’ in the warm-up event.

‘I was happy just to get through it,’ said Williams in her post-match press conference. ‘Wasn’t sure how my serve would be after a little bit of that shoulder, but it’s feeling good, I’m feeling good. So it felt really good.

‘I felt really comfortable in the tournament leading up to this just a couple days ago when I was playing. I actually didn’t feel that comfortable today, so… Interestingly enough.’

Williams’ sister Venus, who she trained with during her two-week quarantine in Adelaide, was also a first round winner – beating Belgium’s Kirsten Flipkens 7-5 6-2 – and Serena hailed her 40-year-old sibling.

‘She’s such an inspiration because she never gets frustrated about her situation, health-wise,’ said Serena. ‘She’s always looking on the bright side.

‘Then she works so hard. Yeah, she’s been great. We were hitting partners for the first two weeks, two and a half weeks, since we were here in Australia. It was so good to train with her. It was so good every day.

‘It’s also very inspiring because she still pushes me on a level that no one’s able to push me, so it was incredibly helpful.’

Osaka, the reigning US Open champion, dropped three games in her first-round win – a particularly impressive result given her first-round opposition.

Russia’s Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova is a three-time Australian Open quarter-finalist but Osaka was too hot to handle.

 After the 6-1 6-2 win, Osaka said: ‘It’s always really hard to play someone that good in the first round.’

She added: ‘Yeah, I would say definitely I was really nervous today. I couldn’t really sleep last night. So I think for me that’s normal. I can’t sleep during, like, before finals and before the first rounds.

‘Yeah, so definitely I was nervous. I kind of expected that because I always want to do well in slams. I never want to lose in the first round.’

Kerber, the 2016 champion, became a major early casualty of the tournament after suffering a 6-0 6-4 defeat to America’s Bernarda Pera.

The German 23rd seed, who has won three Grand Slam titles, admitted she got off to a slow start and admitted that being one of the 76 players placed in hard quarantine – where daily practice privileges were stripped due to positive coronavirus tests on charter flights into Melbourne – had taken its toll.

‘Definitely, yes. I mean, of course I was really trying to staying positive and doing the best out of the two-week situation,’ said Kerber, 33. ‘But, of course, you feel it, especially if you play a real match where it counts and you play the first matches in a Grand Slam, also against an opponent who doesn’t stay in the hard lockdown.

‘I was feeling this at the beginning, that of course my balls are always a little bit out and I was not feeling the rhythm that I was before the two weeks, to be honest.

‘That’s for sure, I mean. But what can I do? I tried the best out of it. Of course, you feel it if you are not hitting ball two weeks and you are not in the rhythm.’

Asked if she felt the long trip was worth it, given the end result, Kerber replied: ‘First of all, I mean, Australia is doing a really good job. Now when you are free, you go outside, everything is open. Of course, it feels like a normal life, let’s say.

‘But when I’m looking back, of course I was not planned the two weeks hard quarantine. I don’t know, maybe if I knew that before to stay really two weeks in the hard quarantine without hitting a ball, maybe I would think twice about that.

‘But I was trying to take the motivation also for this tournament because it’s one of my favorite tournaments. Of course, I knew that we play with a little bit of fans, which is always such a different than playing with no fans. It makes tennis playing much more fun to play out there. So that was my motivation.

‘But, of course, if I knew the real situation before my trip, I would think maybe twice to come here.’

It proved a disappointing day for one of the four-strong British contingent in the women’s draw, Katie Boulter.

Boulter was handed a tricky draw against Russia’s Daria Kasatkina, who has been as high as world No. 10, and went down 6-1 6-4.

‘You know, I’m pretty disappointed with today,’ said Boulter. ‘I felt like I never really got going, I felt quite uncomfortable out on the court. I put a lot of pressure on myself when really there was absolutely no need to.

‘The conditions are slightly different today, it felt heavier, the ball was bouncing higher, she has a different kind of swing to a lot of girls and I really struggled to just get some rhythm and get into the match and compete. Yeah, I’m obviously I’m pretty upset about it.’

Asked about her targets for the rest of the year, Boulter – who picked up two wins in the Gippsland Trophy last week – added: ‘I mean, I’ve worked so hard on my body, so firstly, I really hope that I’m going to stay fit, I believe that I am, and that’s my No. 1 goal for this year as it is any year.

‘But as I kind of feel like I showed last week, unfortunately not this week, the game is there to beat some of these top players and I just feel like I have to maintain it longer, I have to get stronger, I have to get better and it will come out when it feels like coming out. It always does.

‘The more positive weeks that I get, then the more I feel like I’ll get toward my goal. I believe that I’ll get there eventually and, yeah, I will keep working hard.’

In the men’s draw, Gael Monfils, the 10th seed from France was an early casualty – losing in five sets to Finland’s Emil Ruusuvuori – but there were no probems for Dominic Thiem, Alexander Zverev, Milos Raonic and Stan Wawrinka, who all advanced to the second round.

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