Tomic impresses in Sydney but Haase slums in New Zealand

Bernard Tomic got off to an impressive start at the Sydney International with a comprehensive 63 60 dismissal of 8^th seed Mercel Granollers. The defending champion lost the first game of the match but impressively responded by winning 12 of the next 14 against the world 36 in just under a hour. Quoting ABC Austrailian Tomic seems to have a more mature approach to tournments this year and said:-
"This is my first tournament for the year, I won it last year," "I'm not looking at it to defend it. I'm looking at obviously winning another title.
"If I start looking at defending the title, I'll get nervous and I'm probably not going to defend it more than likely."

7^th seed Marin Cilic had to come from a set down against Germany’s Jan-Lennard Struff to move in to the next round. Struff who reaxched three challenger finals last year produced good tennis throughout the close match by winning 77 points compared to Cilics 86. The croatian however regained control of the match with the help of 9 aces and converting 3/5 break points to finally win 36 63 63. The only other seed to play today was Julien Benneteau who like tomic produced a convincing 62 62 win over Matthew Ebden. For full results from Sydney check out the results dection.

Over in New Zealand only 5 matches got played today. 5^th seed Robin Haase suffered a dissapointing 64 57 67 lost to Guillermo Garcia Lopez. The match lasted a martathon 2 hours and ten minuets. There was better news for Philip Kohlschreiber who battled to a 62 36 75 win over the talented Carreno Busta. In a interview after his match the German admitted that it wasn't his best performance during the match calling it “ugly”. Quoting newstalkZB he said:-

"I don't know if it's everywhere, but in Germany we say it's always great if you win and you play bad. That's the good wins."Because on the other hand maybe I sleep well tonight and I play a great match tomorrow."
"In general you just have to win and I think that was also at the end, I just wanted to win, that's why I changed a little bit from the top swing to the slice, just to hope to look a little bit different from my opponent."

Other wins included Roberto Bautista-Agut and Yen-Hsun Lu.