Jarkko Nieminen to meet Frank Dancevic in Australian Open 1st round

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Finnish tennis No. 1 Jarkko Nieminen has been seeded No.24 for the first Grand Slam tournament of the season, the Australian Open.
      Nieminen is currently ranked 26th in the world, but the tournament has seen two absentees among the top men, as Tommy Haas of Germany and Guillermo Canas of Argentina have been forced to pull out with injuries.
     
Nieminen can be pretty pleased with the way the draw treated him.
      It looks at least on paper as though he has avoided an early close encounter with one of the unseeded “floaters” in the draw: players who are outside the seeds through previous injuries that sent their rankings temporarily tumbling, young players in a hurry and on the way up, or simply old foxes who can beat anybody on their day, but who can also lose to anybody on the wrong day.
      Instead Nieminen is scheduled to open his account in Melbourne against a player whom he has met on favourable terms quite recently. The left-hander played Canada’s Frank Dancevic (ranked 72nd on the ATP lists) in the early rounds in Adelaide only a fortnight ago, and he beat him comfortably in straight sets, 6-4, 6-1.
      The two men have actually met on court four times, and Nieminen has emerged on top on each occasion, with the loss of only one set.
     
This does not of course guarantee success, but assuming Nieminen does come through his opener against Dancevic, he will then play either Jesse Levine of the USA (ATP-170), or Argentine Martin Vassallo Arguello (ATP-76). Nieminen has not encountered either man before.
      Vassallo Arguello, 27, has slipped from a career-high of 58th in April last year, and spent much of 2007 playing Challenger tournaments. He is arguably most famous of late for a match he won in August 2007 against the then world No.4 Nikolay Davydenko, who retired hurt in the third and final set. The game has been a source of much controversy owing to strange betting patterns surrounding the outcome.
      Levine is possibly a more problematic customer: he is only 20 and something of an unknown quantity, but he played successfully on the Challenger circuit in the United States last year, winning two events. In one case, he comfortably disposed of the big-serving giant American John Isner (205 cm tall), who had proved too good for Nieminen at last year’s US Open.
     
Nevertheless, if Nieminen can recreate the form he showed in Adelaide at the beginning of the year, when he progressed to the final, this 2nd round match should not be beyond him.
      Nieminen admittedly followed Adelaide with a less auspicious first-round defeat to Belgium’s Xavier Malisse in Auckland, but Malisse is just such an example of a player returning from a long layoff who is “considerably better than his ATP ranking”.
     
Even in the last 32 in Melbourne, things do not look to be overly daunting.
      If matches go according to seeding, Nieminen would be set to meet Tommy Robredo of Spain, the 11th seed.
      Robredo has not made a very impressive start to the new season, and went out in the first round in both tournaments he has entered this year, in Doha and Sydney, despite being seeded 2nd on each occasion.
      Nieminen and Robredo have faced one another five times on the ATP circuit, and whilst Robredo leads 4-1, the last meeting in August 2007.saw the Finn come through easily in straight sets, 6-4, 6-1. At the time, Robredo was ranked 7th in the world.
     
We are already looking ahead a dangerously long way, but by the fourth round, if Nieminen happens to be still in it, the likely opposition gets beefed up quite significantly: 6th seed Andy Roddick.
      Nieminen, whose best performance at the Australian Open has been to reach the 3rd round (in 2003, 2005, and 2006), is in the bottom quarter of the draw, along with Roddick and 2nd seed Rafael Nadal.
      Nadal has a lot to play for in Melbourne: if he can win the title he will unseat the long-standing world No.1 Roger Federer, unless Federer makes it deep into the tournament, at least as far as the semi-finals.
      Nadal starts against a qualifier, while Federer - who is making his court début this year after withdrawing from an earlier tournament with a stomach upset - will play Diego Hartfield of Argentina.
     
The two-week tournament starts on Monday, and Melbourne is nine hours ahead of Finland, so if Jarkko Nieminen's opening match is scheduled on the first day, the chances are the result will be known by the time we appear on Monday afternoon.
      Nieminen is also involved in the men's doubles competition with his regular doubles partner Robert Lindstedt of Sweden. The pairing do not have an enviable task, as they must meet the third-seeded combination of Simon Aspelin and Julian Knowle in the first round.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Jarkko Nieminen opens season with runner-up spot in Adelaide (7.1.2008)

Links:
  Australian Open: Jarkko Nieminen

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