Australian Open 2019: 3 Talking Points as Roger Federer opens his account with a straight-set victory

The first Grand Slam of the year, the Australian Open, began today at Melbourne Park in Melbourne.

The day session went by quite smoothly, with the big guns going through to the second round with relative ease. Andy Murray fell to Roberto Bautista Agut in a gruelling and emotional 5-set encounter. He came back from 2 sets down to level the match but did not have enough in the tank to go all the way.

Meanwhile, defending champion and world no. 3 Roger Federer began his campaign with a relatively easy win over Uzbekistan's Denis Istomin in the final match on Rod Laver Arena. Istomin was the man who defeated Novak Djokovic in 2017 in the 2nd round but Federer ensured that no such upset takes place this year as he won in straight sets, 6-3, 6-4, 6-4, in 1 hour and 57 minutes.

He will take on Great Britain's Dan Evans in the 2nd round on January 16.

Here are 3 talking points from his victory over Istomin:

#3 Did not face a single break point but converted only 33%

One of Roger Federer's greatest weapons is his serve. Despite not having a huge serve like John Isner or Ivo Karlovic, Federer's serve is considered to be one of the best on the tour. If we look at his serve statistics today, he managed only 56% of his first serves against Istomin.

However, despite that, he did not face a single break point in the entire match. On the other hand, his break-point conversion was quite poor, winning just 3 out of 9 break points he faced. He could have finished the match earlier but due to a few long games, it went on for almost 2 hours.

This has been a recurring issue for Federer and he would hope to fix this as the tournament progresses.