Tearful Baltacha leads the way

Published on Monday 23 June 2008 23:44

ON AN opening day in which the top seeds sailed through their opening encounters, it was Scotland's Elena Baltacha who captured the imagination of the Wimbledon crowd.

The British No 3, whose best performance so far in this tournament came when she reached the third round six years ago, was on the verge of defeat several times against Angelique Kerber of Germany, but fought back well to win 6-3, 2-6, 7-5.

At the end, Baltacha burst into tears, happy to have got through a tough match. "I am very emotional, because this does mean a lot to me," she said. "I love playing tennis. It hasn't been an easy road for me. Today it was more just the relief that I could win my first round. It was just pure relief."

The 24-year-old, who was born in Kiev but spent her teenage years in Perth, has a tough second-round match against the Chinese player Jie Zheng, who knocked out the No 30 seed Dominika Cibulkova.

Roger Federer began his bid for a sixth straight singles title with a 6-3, 6-2, 6-2 victory over Dominik Hrbaty of Slovakia, while Ana Ivanovic, the women's top seed and world No 1, dropped only three games to Rosanna de los Rios of Paraguay. Novak Djokovic, the No 3 seed who is in Federer's half of the draw, did not have things quite so much his own way against Michael Berrer of Germany. After losing the first set 7-5 Berrer fought back to take the second 6-2, but Djokovic was then able to raise his game and take the next two sets 6-3, 6-0.

Most spectators had headed home by the time the first real upset of the championships was completed: the straight-sets defeat of the former finalist David Nalbandian. The No 7 seed from Argentina lost 6-4, 6-2, 6-4 to Frank Dancevic of Canada.

Nalbandian briefly tried to fight back from 5-2 down in the third, and with light worsening on Court No 1 he might have forced the match into a second day. But Dancevic, a 23-year-old from Niagara Falls, responded to the South American's threatened Houdini-like escape and closed out the match.

"I didn't play well. You have that kind of day sometimes," said Nalbandian.

"I never thought it was going to be like this. I expected better than this, for sure."

The highest women's seed to go out was Patty Schnyder, the No 12 from Switzerland, who was beaten 6-4, 3-6, 6-2 by Casey Dellacqua of Australia. Alize Cornet of France, the No 17 seed, also fell at the first hurdle, losing in two tiebreaks to Russian qualifier Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova.

Alex Bogdanovic, the British No 2, lost in four sets to Simone Bolelli of Italy, and now has a Wimbledon singles record of played seven lost seven.