Australia fast start v USA

Australia has had a dream start to its Davis Cup quarter final tie with the USA in Brisbane.

Jordan Thompson, playing in only his second live match in Davis Cup for Australia, shocked hot favourite Jack Sock in four sets to give the home nation an unexpected advantage.

The 79th ranked player opened much better on serve, successful 60% of the time with his first attempt compared with 45% for Sock.  Additionally, Thompson won 85% of points when relying on his second serve, making it extremely difficult for the American to break through.

Sock was the more attacking and for that, produced more errors, but he too was solid on serve.  Only three opportunities presented themselves for service breaks in the set and Thompson converted one to take a 6-3 lead.

Sock is number fifteen in the world for good reason and it was no surprise to see him rebound in set two.  Thompson continued to be solid in most parts of his game, but Sock lifted beyond that, and never faced a break point.  The set was on his racquet for the majority of the set,  and he won the key points, keeping his errors to a reasonable quantity. Same score but this time reversed.

The third set went to a tie break and Thompson won out, 7 points to 4.  

17 unforced errors in the fourth and final set proved Jack Sock's undoing and he went down to the Aussie in a close encounter.  6-3 3-6 7-6 6-4

Nick Kyrgios won a big serving match against John Isner 7-5 7-6 7-6.

35 aces between them and average first serves for the match 205 km/h and 210km/h for Kyrgios and Isner respectively.

Kyrgios was down 5-2 in the third set tie break and Isner was serving at 5 points to 4 for the set.  Kyrgios saved two of the best returns you'd want to see just for this occasion and suddenly he was serving for the match.  Fittingly an ace did the trick and at the end of Day One the score read Australia 2 USA 0.

Not so much fun for the Aussie women in Charleston.  Third round losses for Samantha Stosur to Irina-Camelia Begu, Dasha Gavrilova to Daria Kasatkina and Anastasia Rodionova to Caroline Wozniacki.

The quarter final match ups are:

Shelby Rogers (unseeded) v Mirjana Lucic-Baroni (11)

Jelena Ostapenko v Caroline Wozniacki (5)

Anastasija Sevastova (8) v Laura Siegemund 

Irina-Camelia Begu (10) v Daria Kasatkina 

Wozniacki is the class act amongst the eight left and this should be her first title for 2017.