Dementieva and Molik sail through in Australia

By Chris Davies
January 18 2005

Elena Dementieva, Anastasia Myskina, Daniela Hantuchova and Alicia Molik were amongst the first round, second day action at the Australian Open 2005

Dementieva the 6th seed and first round loser here for the last 2 years was not sure whether she would play due to heat illness suffered in Sydney. The Russian faced unknown Ukrainian Alyona Bondarenko ouplaying her opponent 6-3, 6-3. She will next play another Russian tennage prodigy in Anna Chakvetadze.

Home favourite and Australian sweetheart Alicia Molik eased into the second round with a ruthless victory over Spain's Annabel Medina Garrigues in just 71 minutes. The big serve of the giant woman hit winners and her opponent could not handle the pace from the Aussie losing 6-1, 6-3.

Anastasia Myskina started her campaign for a second Grand Slam title with a fine victory over Czech Kveta Peschke 6-1, 6-4. Poor concentration from the 3rd seed saw Peschke claim 3 games in a row during the second set but the Russian held on strongly to advance.

The up's and downs of former top 10 player Daniela Hantuchova still carry on has she was made to fight in a tight two set match against Japan's Akiko Morigami. The 26th seed took the first set 6-4 but was in danger at the second set has Morigami broke serve and served the second set out but luckily for Hantuchova she failed to do so and claimed the final 3 games of the match winning, 6-4, 7-5.

Other winners included Patty Schnyder, Jelena Jankovic, Karolina Sprem, Lisa Raymond all in straight sets along with the youngster Nicole Vaidisova.