Making his first ever appearance at a BlackRock Tour of Champions event, Pat Rafter raced to an impressive opening victory, beating Cedric Pioline 6-4, 6-2 earlier today in Graz, Austria.
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Rafter, who retired from professional tennis in 2003, took little time to settle into the Austrian clay courts, breaking Pioline in the opening game of the match. From then on the Australian held serve with ease and comfortably took the opener 6-4. The second set was an equally comfortable affair for Rafter, who dominated Pioline with the sharp volleys and soft hands that won him the 1997 and 1998 US Open titles. After racing to a 5-1 lead Rafter had opportunities to win the match on Pioline’s serve but the Frenchman showed his fighting instincts and held serve to force Rafter to serve out the match, which he did to love.
Overall, the returning Australian was happy with his performance.
“I’m a little bit surprised!" he said.
“The ball felt really good off my racket and I served and returned well. I moved okay and the ball went where I wanted it to go so it was really nice."
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But he admitted that he did feel some ring-rust after so long away.
"When it gets into tight situations you can forget what the correct play is," he said.
"There can be two or three points turning a match and if you don’t win those points sometimes you can lose those matches. I think that is probably the biggest thing. I’m staying fit back home doing a lot of fitness work. I’ve done a lot of running so my legs are ok. My heart is ok, I’m feeling strong. But I will see how much fun it is when I wake up tomorrow - I think I’m going to be sore!"
So, what were his first impressions of life on the BlackRock Tour of Champions?
"It’s interesting," he said.
"You want to put a good show on but people haven’t come to watch you stuff around. I think you have to play hard, do your best, and every now and then have a fun point. But you leave the jokes up to people like (Henri) Leconte, who are very funny naturally. Playing (Thomas) Muster will be a fun match because we will both go really hard at each other and run for everything. A lot of the guys are good friends so seeing them is fun! I’m looking forward to catching up with Goran (Ivanisevic) when I see him.
Rafter’s next opponent is BlackRock Tour of Champions stalwart Leconte.
RIOS RUNS OUT OF RACQUETS JUST LIKE GORAN
In the first match of the day, Michael Stich defeated Marcelo Rios 6-3, 6-4 in a match that featured a rather bizarre turn of events. After winning the first set comfortably and breaking his opponent to go 3-2 up in the second, Stich looked to have victory sealed. But the Chilean bounced straight back and leveled the set at 4-4 only to find himself raquet-less having broken the strings in the two racquets he had brought onto court. Rios then asked permission to borrow a racquet from his German opponent in order to finish the match. Stich obliged but took no further mercy on the Chilean and won the final two games to win the set 6-4.
“I think I was the better player overall and would have won anyway,” said Stich afterwards. “But I knew what I was doing when I gave him one of my racquets because I knew he wasn’t going to put a ball in court with that racket!”
Stich now tops Group B and in Group A Thomas Muster is sharing the top spot ialong with Pat Rafter after a 6-3, 7-5 victory over Henri Leconte in the third match of the day
