Day 12 and 13

Hi everyone. Sorry for not putting up a post yesterday night, but we lost all internet in the room. So as I am sure many of you know on Sunday I won my first round match here at the Australian Open. I beat a young Australian wildcard 6-2 6-1. It was a pretty solid match for me as the kid obviously had a large crowd in support of him. He started off strong as we remained on serve until 2-2 when I finally broke him at love. The balls are quite hard here which makes them shoot through the court really quickly. After consolidating the break to go up 4-2, I won a long game to break him again and serve out the set. Of course when I started the second set, I was a bit nervous because in my other matches in grand slams I had won the first set then choked away the second. Luckily, I broke him early and since I was serving well I felt confident that I could continue to hold. Finally at 5-1 15-40 on his serve I hit one final slice that ended the match. While I was pleased that I had won, I knew that I had to continue my high level of play to go deep in the tournament. So today I got up relatively early and warmed up Nick for his match and then hit once more before I had to play doubles. The format for doubles is best of two sets, no ad scoring and a third set 10 point tiebreak. This makes every point so incredibly valuable. For Micke and I we just couldn't win the important points, going 0 for 6 on deuce points and eventually losing 6-4 6-2. While I was not happy with the loss, I didn't dwell on it too much as I have my second round singles match tomorrow. Vinh and I practiced a bit this afternoon just to make sure that everything is clicking for tomorrow. I play a Tunisian player by the name of Slim Hamza. He has been playing pretty well in recent months and I am looking forward to the match tomorrow. I play at 11 am, so 7 pm eastern time if anyone is interested in following it on slam tracker. Let's hope for another good day tomorrow!