Rio Olympian Jordan Thompson took advantage\u00a0of his\u00a0Brisbane International wildcard by becoming the first man through to the second round.<\/p>\n
Thompson flew the home flag high at Pat Rafter Arena by smoothly dispatching another wildcard, Sweden\u2019s Elias Ymer, 6-3 6-2 in 90 minutes on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The Sydney 22-year-old, Australia\u2019s third-highest ranked male at No.79, took control of the first-round match early with successive breaks of serve and never looked in trouble.<\/p>\n
The dreadlocked Swede, ranked 81 spots lower, fought back strongly after being down 0-4 in 19 minutes to transform the first set into an arm wrestle at 3-4.<\/p>\n
But new balls saw the extra speed work in favour of Thompson who then went on to close out his fourth ATP tour win.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t make too many errors and returned pretty well and my movement was good,\u201d said Thompson, who rose through the rankings with four Challenger title triumphs last year.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were both sweating absolute rockets but overall I thought I handled the conditions well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thompson, who lost a marathon second round clash at last year\u2019s French Open to Ivo Karlovic 12-10 in the fifth set, will play the winner of Monday\u2019s clash between Bernard Tomic and Spaniard David Ferrer.<\/p>\n
The victory completed an encouraging start for local fans at 2017\u2019s opening tournament.<\/p>\n
Spain-based Alex De Minaur ensured four Australian men would play in the main draw following his second energy-sapping qualifying triumph in two days.<\/p>\n
De Minaur, who grew up in Sydney before moving overseas with his family, fought back on Sunday to overcome American Frances Tiafoe 6-7(4) 6-4 6-4 in two hours and 19 minutes in the sweltering conditions.<\/p>\n
The 17-year-old joins Bernard Tomic, Sam Groth and Thompson in the main draw.<\/p>\n
De Minaur was cheered on by Davis Cup captain Lleyton Hewitt out on court six;\u00a0Hewitt has worked hard with the 17-year-old over the past two months and was highly impressed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just rapt for Alex,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat a way to start the new year.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has a lot of ability, he wants to work hard (and) puts in a lot of hard hours \u2026 that\u2019s the main reason he was able to win today.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jordan Thompson was clinical in a first-round victory over Elias Ymer at the Brisbane International on Sunday, and will next tackle either David Ferrer or Bernard Tomic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5788,"featured_media":12445,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5788"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12444"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12444\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/nsw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}