Azarenka breezes; Nadal is critical of Federer

Associated Press

MELBOURNE, Australia

Third-seeded Victoria Azarenka won 12 straight games to finish off Heather Watson 6-1, 6-0 in 67 minutes Monday in the opening match on center court at the Australian Open.

Azarenka, one of six women who can finish atop the rankings depending on results at Melbourne Park, is coming off a win at the Sydney International last week.

The Sydney champion has gone on to reach the Australian Open final six times since 1997, winning twice. Li Na won in Sydney last year but lost the Australian Open final to Kim Clijsters.

Azarenka beat Li in the Sydney final Friday night and is starting to gain a following in Melbourne’s Chinese community.

She’ll get more local attention in coming days, with a second-round match against Australian wild-card entry Casey Dellacqua, a 6-3, 6-2 winner over Serbia’s Bojana Jovanovski.

In other results, 26th-seeded Anabel Medina of Spain beat Eva Birnerova of Czech Republic 6-3, 6-3, and Eleni Daniilidou of Greece topped 41-year-old Kimiko Date-Krumm of Japan 6-3, 6-2.

No. 30 Kevin Anderson of South Africa was the first man into the second round, beating Denmark’s Frederik Nielsen 6-1, 6-2, 6-4.

After an unusually cool buildup to the tournament, players were confronted with a strong breeze and temperatures approaching 86 degrees Monday.

Clijsters was due to play Maria Joao Koehler of Portugal, and Li, the French Open champion, had a first-round match against Ksenia Pervak of Kazakhstan. Top-ranked Caroline Wozniacki, still searching for her first major title, faced Australia’s Anastasia Rodionova.

Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal are on the same side of the draw for the first time since 2005.

Third-seeded Federer, a four-time Australian Open winner, was set to play on Rod Laver Arena in a Monday night match against Russian qualifier Alexander Kudryavtsev. Second-ranked Nadal had the last match on Hisense Arena — the second show court at Melbourne Park — against Russian Alex Kuznetsov.

Nadal criticized Federer over the weekend for letting other players “burn themselves” by complaining about tour conditions while maintaining his good reputation by rarely making negative comments about tennis.

After telling a pre-tournament news conference Sunday he had no intention of being the frontman for the players’ grievances because it has reflected badly on him in the past, Nadal was then critical of 16-time Grand Slam winner Federer in a Spanish-language interview.

Responding to the suggestion that Federer disliked players complaining openly about problems on the tour because it tarnished the image of tennis, Nadal said he took another view.

“No, I totally disagree,” he said in comments translated from Spanish, adding that Federer could look like a gentleman by saying nothing negative while the other players “can burn themselves.”