Defending champion Rafael Nadal handed out a bruising lesson to highly-rated Austrian Dominic Thiem on Thursday as a 6-2, 6-2, 6-3 victory took the Spaniard into third round of the French Open.
Eight-time winner Nadal, bidding to be the first man to clinch five Roland Garros titles in a row, had been expected to face a severe test from the 20-year-old world number 57. But Thiem, who trains for big matches by running through forests carrying tree trunks to build stamina, ran out of steam on Philippe Chatrier court despite showing occasional glimpses of potential.
Nadal took his career record in Paris to 61 wins against a single loss and goes on to face either Leonardo Mayer of Argentina or Russia’s Teymuraz Gabashvili. ‘Dominic is a dangerous player and I knew if I wasn’t playing well then I’d be in trouble. But he is a future star, 100 percent. His level of ball is very high, he is strong on the forehand and backhand. He has everything to be a big champion,’ Nadal said.
Nadal’s compatriot David Ferrer, the fifth seed and last year’s runner-up, cruised past Italy’s Simone Bolelli 6-2, 6-3, 6-2 and next faces either Italy’s Andreas Seppi or Juan Monaco of Argentina. Ferrer has made the quarterfinals of all of his last nine majors.
Donald Young, the former world junior number one, made the third round for the first time by beating Spanish 26th seed Feliciano Lopez 6-3, 7-6 (7/1), 6-3.
Mirza-Black advance
Fifth seeds Sania Mirza and Cara Black breezed past their first round opponents while the popular duo of Rohan Bopanna and Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi were shown the door in the men’s doubles event on Thursday.
The Indo-Zimbabwean pair of Mirza and Black began campaign with a 6-3, 6-3 win over Slovakia’s Daniela Hantuchova and Israel’s Shahar Peer on Court 11. They will next play the Canadian-Polish combine of Gabriela Dabrowski and Alicja Rosolska.
The disappointing news for the Indian fans came when Bopanna and his Pakistani partner Qureshi suffered a 3-6, 4-6 loss at the hands of unseeded Jonathan Erlich and Marcelo Melo. The Israeli-Brazilian pair put up a clincical show, wrapping up the contest in 65 minutes.