Day one at the open has nearly ended. There is a match in progress between Marat Safin and Benjamin Becker. Safin is ahead in the fifth set against the player who ended the career of Andre Agassi.

Today was pretty much business as usual. Federer won first up against Bjorn Phau. The 7-5, 6-0, 6-4 suggests it was a comfortable win for the no. 1 seed. Federer didn’t look fantastic however he did enough to claim his spot in the second round. His next opponent is veteran Swede Jonas Bjorkman. Back in 97 Bjorkman was ranked no. 4 in the world. He is now down to 50 and I don’t see him winning a set against Federer.

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I have just finished watching the Adelaide International tennis final between Novak Djokovic and Chris Guccione. Based on rankings you would have given it to Djokovic at the start. As it turned out Guccione played above his ranking and pushed the young 19 year Serbian to 7-5 in the third set.

Guccione is big, he stands at 200 cm or 6′ 7″ on the old scale. His serve is equally big and when he gets into a good rhythm he is hard to stop. He plays a serve volley game. Djokovic by contrast plays the counter puncher and quite often when he looked off balance and out of a point he would thread the needle down the line or play a deft cross court shot to win a point.

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