Roger Federer continued preparation for his Australian Open title defence with a 6-3, 7-6 (8) win over Karen Khachanov at the Hopman Cup, giving Switzerland a 1-0 lead over Russia. Federer’s partner Belinda Bencic was playing Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in a later women’s singles match Tuesday, with a Fast4 mixed doubles to follow.<\/p>\n
The 36-year-old Federer had his service broken by the 21-year-old Khachanov in the opening game but rebounded to break back immediately and won the opening set in 29 minutes.<\/p>\n
Khachanov matched Federer impressively with backhand winners in the second set before a back-and-forth tiebreaker. Federer saved a set point in the tiebreaker and won on his third match point after a successful challenge.<\/p>\n
“I had to work hard, experience helps sometimes,” said Federer, who beat Rafael Nadal in the Australian Open final last year. “It’s good to be free-swinging and young like he is. I remember those days …”<\/p>\n
The win came before a record crowd of 13,943 at Perth Arena, an attendance which eclipsed one of Federer’s matches last year in the Western Australia state capital.<\/p>\n
Earlier, the United States beat Japan 2-1 after an illness withdrawal by one of the Japanese players. But the win may come at a cost after Jack Sock injured his hip.<\/p>\n
Sock slipped on the court during the first set of his match against Yuichi Sugita, grabbing his hip. He was forced to retire at 1-1 in the second set after losing the first set 7-6 (1).<\/p>\n
Hopman Cup director Paul Kilderry said he thinks Sock will be OK for the unbeaten U.S. team’s important third game.<\/p>\n
“He has had some treatment on it and he feels he’ll be good to go,” Kilderry said. “He said it felt uncomfortable out there, so I think he was just a little nervous about doing more damage.”<\/p>\n
The U.S. team had already led 1-0 after Japan’s female player, Naomi Osaka, withdrew with an unspecified illness, handing CoCo Vandeweghe a 6-0, 6-0 win.<\/p>\n
The Americans were also awarded the Fast4 mixed doubles match 4-0, 4-0 because Osaka was not able to compete.<\/p>\n
Osaka’s place in both matches was taken by 19-year-old local player Maddison Inglis, who was woken up at 8:30 a.m. by tournament officials who told her she would be required to play.<\/p>\n
The U.S. and Switzerland play on Thursday in a match that could decide which team advances from the group to Saturday’s final.<\/p>\n
“Thursday night is a sellout,” Kilderry said. “He is confident he’ll be fine.”<\/p>\n
In Group A matches on Wednesday, Canada plays Germany and Australia takes on Belgium. Australia beat Canada and Germany defeated Belgium in the opening round.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Roger Federer continued preparation for his Australian Open title defence with a 6-3, 7-6 (8) win over Karen Khachanov at the Hopman Cup, giving Switzerland a 1-0 lead over Russia. Federer’s partner Belinda Bencic was playing Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in a later women’s singles match Tuesday, with a Fast4 mixed doubles to follow. The 36-year-old Federer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16969,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16968"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16968\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16970,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16968\/revisions\/16970"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}