{"id":45590,"date":"2022-01-17T10:26:21","date_gmt":"2022-01-17T15:26:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/?p=45590"},"modified":"2022-01-17T10:26:21","modified_gmt":"2022-01-17T15:26:21","slug":"australian-open-mens-day-1-recap-rafael-nadal-21st-slam-title","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2022\/01\/17\/australian-open-mens-day-1-recap-rafael-nadal-21st-slam-title\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian Open Men&#8217;s Day 1 Recap: Rafael Nadal Off to a Winning Start in Quest for 21st Slam Title"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Day 1 at the 2022 Australian Open was inevitably marred by <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2022\/01\/16\/novak-djokovic-loses-final-appeal-will-officially-miss-australian-open\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Novak Djokovic&#8217;s much-publicized absence<\/a>. The defending champion and current World #1 was deported and his place as the #1 seed in the draw was taken by Lucky Loser Salvatore Caruso, which has really opened up this top half of the draw and given many players a chance at a big run here.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Australian Open Men&#8217;s Day 1 Recap<\/strong><\/h2>\n<h4><strong>On the plus side<\/strong><\/h4>\n<p>With Djokovic out of the tournament and Federer still absent from the tour, <strong>Rafael Nadal<\/strong> is the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2021\/07\/23\/federer-nadal-djokovic-tie\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">one man who can get to #21 here<\/a> in Melbourne and he got off to a very good start, easily dispatching Marcos Giron, dropping only seven games and not conceding a single break. Nadal is by far the man with the most Slam pedigree in this draw, and despite his age and recent health struggles, it&#8217;d be a huge mistake <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2022\/01\/16\/australian-open-draw-nadals-toughest-yet\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">to dismiss his chances<\/a> of a second Australian Open title this fortnight.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Gael Monfils\u00a0<\/strong>has found himself with a very favorable draw following Djokovic&#8217;s deportation, and he seems to be in good enough shape to take advantage of it and have a great run here. He wasted no time against Coria, dropping only five games all match and not getting broken a single time. The Frenchman has already claimed a title this season in Adelaide and seems to be back to form after his huge struggles post-COVID break.<\/p>\n<p><a id=\"XXYmsMaoSCFvuYWc2mUW1Q\" class=\"gie-single\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1365062068\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color:#a7a7a7;text-decoration:none;font-weight:normal !important;border:none;display:inline-block;\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'XXYmsMaoSCFvuYWc2mUW1Q',sig:'QTNrF3vm1-ED1d7fG5lMJfVFcSEbPP2J45HfRSZqwG4=',w:'396px',h:'594px',items:'1365062068',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n<p><strong>Carlos Alcaraz<\/strong> is the youngest player in the draw but looked like a seasoned veteran out there, easily winning his first round match in straight sets with no fuss. He&#8217;s also shown up in Melbourne with a much more developed body, a bit reminiscent of a young Nadal, looking ready to take on the tour, starting here. He reached the quarters at the US Open and has every reason to believe in another deep run here.<\/p>\n<p><strong><\/p>\n<h4>Who looked bad<\/h4>\n<p><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Despite winning his match,\u00a0<strong>Denis Shapovalov <\/strong>had a very poor performance against Laslo Djere, who should theoretically be an easy opponent for a top player on a hard court. The extremely erratic Canadian seems far from ready to have a big run here this fortnight.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Cameron Norrie\u00a0<\/strong>got absolutely destroyed by Sebastian Korda, winning just seven games and offering no resistance whatsoever. The Brit is now on a five-match losing streak and has a terrible record of five wins and nine losses since his shocking Indian Wells title win.<\/p>\n<p><a id=\"YHjkz78yQRRwRAElpLeYQQ\" class=\"gie-single\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/1365067975\" target=\"_blank\" style=\"color:#a7a7a7;text-decoration:none;font-weight:normal !important;border:none;display:inline-block;\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'YHjkz78yQRRwRAElpLeYQQ',sig:'yA9wvEz9Y908pfedFJHOufI0kN4sMovqwgF3I-HwJ9Q=',w:'594px',h:'415px',items:'1365067975',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n<p><strong>Aslan Karatsev\u00a0<\/strong>won last week in Sydney and was a semifinalist last year at this tournament, a run he&#8217;s looking to repeat or improve on. However, his start was far from ideal; he looked tired and barely got past Jaume Munar, who had his chances. Karatsev will have to improve substantially to make any real noise this fortnight.<\/p>\n<p><em>Main Photo from Getty.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Day 1 at the 2022 Australian Open was inevitably marred by Novak Djokovic&#8217;s much-publicized absence. The defending champion and current World #1 was deported and his place as the #1 seed in the draw was taken by Lucky Loser Salvatore Caruso, which has really opened up this top half of the draw and given many [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1742,"featured_media":45397,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7,2,9],"tags":[16913,9895,205,1688,5729,776,144,4775,6915,135,2403,8147],"class_list":["post-45590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-atp","category-australian-open","category-featured","category-news","tag-2022-australian-open","tag-aslan-karatsev","tag-australian-open","tag-cameron-norrie","tag-carlos-alcaraz","tag-denis-shapovalov","tag-gael-monfils","tag-laslo-djere","tag-marcos-giron","tag-rafael-nadal","tag-salvatore-caruso","tag-sebastian-korda"],"modified_by":"Yesh Ginsburg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1742"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}