Rafael Nadal will be back in action after beating James Duckworth as he takes the court against another Aussie at the Australian Open on Wednesday. Tomas Berdych and Robin Haase are also bidding for a place in round two.
Matthew Ebden vs. (2) Rafael Nadal
Nadal headed into the Australian Open as a major question mark and he will have to do a lot more than beat James Duckworth to erase those doubts, but early returns were encouraging on Monday. The second-ranked Spaniard took care of Duckworth 6-4, 6-3, 7-5 in a somewhat bizarre match in which rallies were few and far between due to the underdog’s unwillingness to compete with Nadal from the baseline.
Up next for the 2009 Aussie Open champion on Wednesday is another Aussie in Ebden, who lost their only previous meeting 6-4, 6-4 eight years ago at Queen’s Club. The world No. 48 did well to climb out of a significant hole against Jan-Lennard Struff to pull off a 1-6, 6-4, 6-3, 6-4 victory in round one. However, Ebden poses little threat–much less than Struff, in fact–to Nadal with his relative lack of firepower. The 31-year-old will also rush the net at every opportunity in this matchup and we just saw how that worked out for Duckworth.
Pick: Nadal in 3 losing 11-14 games
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Tomas Berdych vs. Robin Haase
Thirteen years after their first encounter, Berdych and Haase will be squaring off for the sixth time in their careers on Wednesday. Berdych leads the head-to-head series 3-2, and it is tied up at two wins apiece on either hard courts or carpet. The two veterans faced each other twice in 2017, when Haase prevailed 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 in Dubai before the Czech got the job done 7-6(5), 6-3 on the red clay of Madrid.
Berdych managed to produce just one good tournament in 2018 and it was none other than the Aussie Open, where he reached the quarterfinals before falling to Federer. The 33-year-old Czech missed much of the season’s remainder because of a back injury, but he has come back like gangbusters so far in 2019. Berdych finished runner-up in Doha before blasting Kyle Edmund 6-3, 6-0, 7-5 on Monday. Although Edmund is nowhere near 100 percent, a similar performance against Haase would be more than enough for the former world No. 4 to advance. Haase, a straight-set winner over Guillermo Garcia-Lopez, had previously lost during first-round action in both Doha (Nicolas Jarry) and Auckland (David Ferrer).
Pick: Berdych in 4
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