{"id":10329,"date":"2017-01-09T15:58:42","date_gmt":"2017-01-09T04:58:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/?p=10329"},"modified":"2017-01-09T16:31:15","modified_gmt":"2017-01-09T05:31:15","slug":"wildcard-and-top-seeds-breeze-through","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/news\/2017\/01\/09\/wildcard-and-top-seeds-breeze-through","title":{"rendered":"Wildcard and top seeds breeze through"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Main draw action at the <strong>East Hotel Canberra Challenger 2017<\/strong> kicked off today with Aussie wildcard <strong>Andrew Harris<\/strong> (VIC) defeating unseeded <strong>Thomas Fancutt<\/strong> (QLD) in a blistering match 7-6[3], 6-4.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe first set was pretty tough,\u201d Harris said. \u201cHe was serving unbelievably and I was struggling to put a point on his serve.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Today marked Harris\u2019 first pro tournament match in two years, after suffering from two consecutive injuries.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s nice to get out there on the court,\u201d Harris said. \u201cIt\u2019s been a long time since my last competitive match so it was a lot of fun.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In round 2, Harris will face top seed [1] <strong>Jan-Lennard Struff<\/strong> (GER) on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>Harris continued, \u201cIt\u2019ll be a good opportunity to play another guy [in the] top 100, [and] go out there and have fun.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The three other Aussie wildcards were not so fortunate, with [WC] <strong>Brandon Walkin <\/strong>(QLD) falling to Struff in straight sets. Walkin kept Struff on his feet, however the top seed\u2019s expertise saw him win matchpoint with an ace, 6-4, 6-4.<\/p>\n<p>[WC] <strong>Alexei Popyrin<\/strong> (NSW) put up a good fight taking the first set against third seed <strong>Pierre-Hugues Herbert<\/strong> (FRA) to a tie-break. However Herbert proved too strong, taking the match 7-6, 6-4.<\/p>\n<p>Also through to round two are fifth and sixth seeds <strong>Konstantin Kravchuk <\/strong>(RUS) and <strong>Steve Darcis<\/strong> (BEL). Qualifier <strong>Yusuke Watanuki<\/strong> (JPN) and unseeded <strong>Denis Shapovalov <\/strong>(CAN) played a three set showdown with Shapovalov prevailing 6-7[7], 6-4, 6-4 after a two hours marathon match. France\u2019s <strong>Quentin Halys<\/strong> (FRA) and <strong>Hans Podlipnik-Castillo<\/strong> (CHI)\u00a0will also progress.<\/p>\n<p>The tournament\u2019s first doubles match played out today, as Canberra\u2019s <strong>James Frawley<\/strong> played alongside Queenslander, Fancutt. The pairing were taken out in just over an hour by Frenchman <strong>Corentin Moutet<\/strong> and <strong>N Vijay Sundar Prashanth<\/strong> (IND) 6-3, 7-5.<\/p>\n<p>Despite a doubles loss, Frawley will face\u00a0world No.761 <strong>Aleksandar Vukic<\/strong> (NSW) on centre court on Day 2 at 10am.<\/p>\n<p>Tournament information including Order of Play can be found <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/tournaments\/pro-tournaments\/australian-pro-tour\/canberra-2\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Watch the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.epicentre.tv\/itf-tennis\/\">Canberra Pro Tour Live Stream<\/a> and keep up to date with live scores using the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.protennislive.com\/LSHD\/main.html?year=2017&amp;wkno=99&amp;eventid=&amp;tour=1&amp;lang=en&amp;ref=http%3A\/\/www.atpworldtour.com\">Pro Tennis Live App<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Main draw action at the East Hotel Canberra Challenger 2017 kicked off today with Aussie wildcard Andrew Harris (VIC) defeating unseeded Thomas Fancutt (QLD) in a blistering match 7-6[3], 6-4. \u201cThe first set was pretty tough,\u201d Harris said. \u201cHe was serving unbelievably and I was struggling to put a point on his serve.\u201d Today marked [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5993,"featured_media":10330,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5993"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/act\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}