We can know safely say that the 2015 Australian Open is truly underway. Tennis' first major of the year always serves up some shocks, but few expected one to come quite so early in the Open. However, within four hours of the tournament's worldwide coverage beginning, fifth seed Ana Ivanovic had fallen at the hands of unseeded Lucie Hradecka 1-6, 6-3, 6-2. Ivanovic becomes the first top-five seed to go out in the first round of the Australian Open since 2003 when then third-seeded defending champion Jennifer Capriati went out.
Ivanovic entered the tournament as one of the pre-tournament favorites. While not having the strongest possible showing in last season's four majors, she made it deep into the second week in Australia and upset Serena Williams along the way. She entered the 2014 season ranked 16th in the world, but the former French Open champion and world number one enjoyed a career year to get her ranking back up.
Ivanovic began the 2015 season looking to continue her sterling form of the previous season, and was a finalist in the Brisbane International warm-up tournament leading into the year's first major.
She began Monday's match in the same form, and took the first set easily, winning six of the match's first seven games. Ivanovic looked to be finding a rhythm and was grooving her ground strokes. However, after the first set the player the analysts call "Bad Ana" returned.
Her serve toss began shifting all over the place, and the double-faults quickly followed. When she is at her best, Ivanovic is unbeatable. However, her inconsistency stems from that serve. When it begins to go awry, the rest of her game goes as well.
Hradecka quickly took advantage, and her power game took full control of the match. While the world number 142 may have had to qualify for the tournament, she is a terrific doubles player. Hradecka has won the French and US Open doubles titles in addition to an appearance in the final at Wimbledon, a semifinal berth in Australia and an Olympic silver medal in the 2012 games.
She has struggled for consistency on the singles side, but did not show it this evening. Given her success in doubles, Hradecka has a skill very few female players have: she can volley very well.
She began punching and counter-punching to perfection, interchanging hard and low crosscourt drives with crosscourt topspin shots which brought her in to volley. Her winners stats increased, and the relationship between Hradecka's and Ivanovic's quality of play was inverse.
As Hradecka hit ever more volleys, Ivanovic lost her control of the match. It was evident that her mind was not quite right, and the mental aspect affected her serve. The toss moved further right and the double faults followed. In addition to the double faults following, the second and third sets did as well.
Ivanovic completely lost any hold she had on the match, and seemed to hand the last two sets to Hradecka. After the Czech won the second set 6-3, she jumped out to a 5-2 lead in the third with back-to-back breaks. Fittingly, the story of the match played out again over the final game as Ivanovic endured even more unforced errors before finally losing the match 1-6, 6-3, 6-2.
Ivanovic will now look to regroup before the back-to-back WTA Premier Events in Indian Wells, California and Miami, Florida in March. Meanwhile, Hradecka moves on to the second round and on Wednesday will face either Polona Hercog of Slovakia or Qiang Wang of China.