Nadal's knee holds up
MELBOURNE, Australia — Rafael Nadal has a new injury issue — a tendon problem in his right knee that nearly prompted him to forfeit a first-round match at the Australian Open on Monday that he went to win handily.
Nadal had his right knee heavily taped during his 6-4, 6-1, 6-1 win over Alex Kuznetsov.
“I was sitting on a chair in the hotel, I felt like a crack on the knee ... really strange,” Nadal said. “I stand up. I felt the knee a little bit strange. I moved the leg like this two times to try to find the feeling. After the second time, the knee stays with an unbelievable pain completely straight. I have no movement on the knee.”
“I wasn’t 100 percent sure I would have a chance to play,” Nadal added.
The Spaniard, who was bothered by a left shoulder injury late last year, decided to play after an MRI exam showed no major damage, but he still had concerns going into the match.
“I started with a little bit of a scare at the beginning, and nervous because I was really disappointed yesterday,” he said. “But after the first 10 games ... I started to play with normal conditions.
“The best thing is I felt the knee very well. I really don’t understand why happened everything, but I am really happy that today I was ready to play and I played a fantastic match.”
Defending women’s champion Kim Clijsters opened with a 7-5, 6-1 win over Portuguese qualifier Maria Joao Koehler, showing no signs of the hip spasms that forced her to withdraw from a tuneup event in Brisbane 10 day ago.
Four-time champion Roger Federer and women’s No. 1 Caroline Wozniacki were aiming to join them in the second round when they played matches later Monday at Rod Laver Arena.
Li Na, who lost the Australian final to Clijsters last year, earned a 6-3, 6-1 win over Ksenia Pervak of Kazakhstan. In the first featured match of the tournament, third-seeded Victoria Azarenka won 12 straight games to finish off Heather Watson 6-1, 6-0 in 67 minutes on center court.
The Hisense Arena crowd was solidly behind Nadal, particularly the groups of young women who screamed and whistled when he changed his shirt and yelled “We love you Rafa” and “Vamos Rafa!” between games. He didn’t give them a chance to cheer for long, needing only about 30 minutes each to win the final two sets.
Clijsters similarly had an easy time in the second half of her match, breaking Koehler’s serve in the deciding game of the first set and reeling off 13 straight points to start the second.
She claimed later that the win wasn’t as easy as it looked.
“It was hard to really get a good rhythm out there,” Clijsters said. “I did feel like I was seeing the ball probably not always as good as I would like to.”
