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Left: Rafael Nadal of Spain reacts as he plays against Lukas Rosol of the Czech Republic during their Qatar Open tennis match in Doha December 31, 2013. Right: Lukas Rosol of the Czech Republic hits a return to Rafael Nadal of Spain during their Qatar Open tennis match in Doha December 31, 2013. [Photo/Agencies] |
Top seed Rafael Nadal, second seed David Ferrer and third seed Andy Murray opened the new tennis season with first round wins on the last day of 2013.
Murray had the easiest path to victory on New Year's Eve, barely breaking a sweat during his 6-0, 6-0 win over 2,129th-ranked Qatari wildcard recipient Mousa Shanan Zayed.
The match took all of 37-minutes and Murray hit the practice courts afterwards for a little extra court time.
"Yeah, it was pretty easy," Murray said of the match. "It's kind of a tough situation. It's not something you're really looking forward to, but you just have to try and play and concentrate.
"In terms of feeling sorry for him, not really. I mean, after the match but not during it."
Murray won all but 17-points in the 66-point match. He won all 20 points when his first serve went in.
"It's fairly rare but you see it once, maybe twice in a season," Murray said of being 100 percent successful on first serve points won. "Definitely for individual sets. Maybe not always for an entire match."
Zayed has only played two tour-level matches, losing the other match to Gael Monfils in the first round at last year's event in Doha.
Nadal breezed through the opening set, but was tested in the second set by Lukas Rosol before the world No. 1 secured a 6-2, 7-6 (7) win on his fifth match point of the tiebreaker.
The only other time Nadal faced the Czech native was a five-set loss in the second round at Wimbledon in 2012. After that match Nadal took seven months off the tour with a knee injury.
"Thinking about revenge is a bad way to start the match, my opinion," said Nadal, when asked if that entered his mind. "You have to start with the calm and with the mind very open to analyze what's going on in the match.
"I was a little bit nervous. I didn't have a great memory of the last match playing against him. After that match I didn't play not one more match in a tennis court for almost eight months, so it was a bad feeling in that moment."
Nadal committed 27 unforced errors in the match with most of those posted in a wobbly second set. But Rosol topped that statistic with 50 unforced errors in the one hour, 43 minute match.
Ferrer needed three sets to come up with a 6-3, 5-7, 6-3 win over Alexandr Dolgopolov of the Ukraine.
Defending champion and fifth seed Richard Gasquet also moved along to the second round with a 7-5, 6-1 win over Egyptian wildcard recipient Karim Hossam.
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