Day 1 at the Australian saw the top seeds play according to form.  Andy Murray had an easy opening round beating South African, Kevin Anderson, 6-1, 6-2, 6-2.  Anderson won a tournament back in 2008 and played college tennis for University of Illinois.  The tall South African, however, had few answers for Murray’s versatile game.

Also winning in straight sets were Rafael Nadal over Peter Luczak, Andy Roddick over Thiemo de Bakker, local Aussie, Bernard Tomic over Guillaume Rufin.

Rain had caused the delays on all but the two main courts which have roofs, but play did seem to finish.

Among the top seeds, the big question mark was del Potro’s wrist.  Would it hamper his play and threaten his AO title chances? It did take the Argentine four sets to beat Michael Russell, 6-4, 6-4, 3-6, 6-2.  It’s hard to say whether the close scores meant del Potro was rusty or Russell was playing well.  This won’t become clear until the next few rounds, but it doesn’t bode well that it took 4 sets to go through.  However, the top seeds will tell you that a tight first round is the norm in the sport as you work your way into a Slam.

In other matches, American Wayne Odesnik beat Kavcic of Slovakia in four sets, but Mardy Fish lost his match to Golubev of Kazkhstan in four.

Perhaps the toughest first round matches pitted Radek Stepanek, 13th seed and recent Brisbane finalist, against the big serving Croatian, Ivo Karlovic.  Stepanek had never lost to Karlovic, but they’ve only played each other a handful of times.  Mostly recently, they played in Davis Cup last year in a marathon five setter won by Stepanek.  Prior to that, however, they hadn’t played since 2006.  For anyone in Australian Open results pool, this match probably ruined a few brackets.  Stepanek was the hotter coming in and likely to have moved several rounds if he had won, but now Karlovic has that spot.

Day 2 features Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic playing their first round matches.  Other players of note playing on Day 2 include Lleyton Hewitt, Fernando Verdasco, Nikolay Davydenko, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, and Robin Soderling.

Perhaps the toughest opening round is Mikhail Youzhny, seeded 20th, who had a decent post US Open season last year, playing Richard Gasquet.  Gasquet was banned from several tournaments last year due to cocaine use, but was found not guilty (it was just a “kiss”).  Gasquet’s rankings slipped not surprisingly, and he’s been trying to play himself back into shape.  He was a finalist at Sydney last week, losing to Marcos Baghdatis, and so is the hotter player coming into the AO.  Expect Gasquet to make a match out of this one.

Finally, Sam Querrey was interviewed by ESPN explaining how he got into a freak accident in Bangkok sitting on a glass table that gave way and cut him.  Querrey had just completed a match and there was a sofa that he had sat on prior to going to the showers.  Since he was sweaty from that match, the sofa was wet.  When he got dressed, he didn’t want to mess up his clothing, so he sat on the table to change rather than get his new clothes wet from the sofa.  The table held for about 30 seconds, and just as he was about to finish, the table gave way under his weight and a piece of glass cut his right arm.

Querrey was rushed to the hospital, where he said he was that close to cutting a nerve that may have been career-ending.  The glass shard just missed a nerve by a millimeter.  Querrey took about two months off the tour healing up.   Asked how long it took to get back into playing shape, Querrey said, once he could hit again, it took about 3-4 weeks.  The part that took the longest was getting his shoulder loose enough to serve well again.

Querrey plays veteran, Rainer Schuettler, a finalist at the Australian Open in 2003.  Schuettler also reached the semis of Wimbledon in 2008. Schuettler is a tough veteran, but is closer to retirement than to his peak years.

Querrey has been practicing his return of serve, trying to be more aggressive, since he says he normally holds serve fairly easily and that should lead to better opportunities on return.