Eight seeds in all, six in the women’s draw and two in the men’s draw, were the only disappointments on the first day of the first Grand Slam of 2006, the Australian Open. The most high profile of them being, tenth seed Venus Williams who made her earliest Grand Slam exit in five years when she fell to little-known Bulgarian teenager Tszvetana Pironkova 2-6, 6-0, 9-7. Later, Serena struggled to keep her title defence alive with a battling 6-3 6-7 6-2 win over unseeded Chinese player Li Na. Both the sisters came into the tournament with question marks about their fitness but Serena said her biggest problem against Li was mental. Addressing a press conference after her match against Venus, Pironkova said that the former world number one reputation had never entered her mind allowing her to knock Williams out of the tournament. “I have know about Venus for a long time from the TV when I was a little kid. But when you go on court I am a professional player, so I should not think about the fact that she was kind of my idol before,” Pironkova said. While Pironkova said she had attempted to prepare for the match like any other, nerves had affected her in the first set. “I was a little nervous in the beginning of the match. Then when I sat down during the break between the sets, I said to myself, ‘it’s okay. You are here in the Vodafone Arena, this big court, you need to show some tennis to the audience. Just relax and play your game.’ That happened.”Pironkova, who began playing at the age of four and is coached by her father Kiril, has played just three other WTA level tournaments, reaching the semi-finals in two and her ranking has jumped to 95th in the world. The match against Williams was her first in a Grand Slam tournament and the victory set up a second-round clash with Laura Granville of the United States.
