Players who won the Australian Open in 2019, 2018 and 2017 were all winners on Day 1 of the tournament’s 2020 edition, while Coco Gauff again defeated Venus Williams in a repeat of their famous Wimbledon 2019 meeting.
Rocking a custom-made dress that goes in line with the rest of Nike’s Melbourne collection, defending champion Naomi Osaka overcame a slow start to beat Czech Marie Bouzkova 6-2 6-4 in one hour and 20 minutes. During the match, the third-seeded Osaka broke the net with one of her serves!
Chasing a record-equaling 24th Grand Slam title, the 2017 Australian Open winner Serena Williams needed just 58 minutes to dispatch Russian Anastasia Potapova 6-0 6-3. The print of the American’s exclusive dress is similar to that of the Nike Spring Melbourne Jacket.
Seventh seed Petra Kvitova was even more efficient than Serena in the first round, as the 2019 runner-up stormed past fellow Czech Katerina Siniakova 6-1 6-0 in 50 minutes.
The 2018 Australian Open champion Caroline Wozniacki got her final tournament before retirement off to a good start with a 6-1 6-3 victory over American Kristie Ahn.
In a repeat of last year’s Wimbledon match-up between 15-year-old Coco Gauff and her idol Venus Williams, which rocketed the young American to stardom, the far less experienced player again overcame the seven-time Grand Slam champion, proving that the first-round victory in London was no fluke. In what was another meeting between the youngest and the oldest player in the draw, the world No.67 Gauff celebrated 7-6(5) 6-3.
World No.1 Ashleigh Barty committed six unforced errors in the first 13 points and never looked comfortable in the first set against Lesia Tsurenko of Ukraine, but sharpened up before the second set started and the reset translated into a complete control in the second and third sets en route to a 5-7 6-1 6-1 victory. After the first-round scare, Barty assured her fans that the first set was not all that bad: “Nah, it’s all good. In the first set it was still in my control. I was just rushing points, trying to finish them too early.”
