Tennis: Coria advances after tough opener

Top seed Guillermo Coria safely negotiated his opening match at the Heineken Open tennis tournament in Auckland tonight but not without a fight from unseeded German Nicolas Kiefer.

Coria's 7-6 6-3 win thrilled the almost-capacity opening day crowd, with both players bringing their power to centre court.

The first set was an hour-long slugfest in which the lines on all parts of the court were under constant attack, leading to some controversial calls.

The set was eventually decided in a tiebreaker in which Kiefer lost the last three points.

Coria took the early advantage in the second set when he broke his 26-year-old opponent for 2-0 and again later en route to wrapping it up 6-3.

Coria will now play the winner of tomorow's clash at the ASB Bank Tennis Centre between New Zealand's Mark Nielsen and former winner Dominik Hrbaty.

Second seed Jiri Novak went looking for a decent early-season scrap in the second centre court match on opening day -- and he also got it.

In his fourth clash with 23-year-old Belgian Xavier Malisse, the 28-year-old Czech dropped the opening service game but immediately broke back.

With a further service break each, the first set was decided in the inevitable tiebreaker which Malisse dominated initially before Novak, the 1996 open champion, levelled at 5-5, 6-6 and 7-7. Malisse snatched two points on Novak's serve to win 9-7.

The second set was more of the same -- one break each but with the tiebreaker won comfortably by Novak.

Malisse, broken in the fourth and eighth games of the third set, bowed out after a battling two hours 13 minutes effort.

Earlier, two players ranked around 50 in the world turned in an entertaining main draw opener with Spaniard David Sanchez beating American regular Jan-Michael Gambill in straight sets after the first had gone to a tiebreaker.

Next up hard-hitting seventh seed Fernando Gonzalez squared off against unseeded Dutchman Raemon Sluiter, ranked 24 places lower at 59.

Sluiter, resplendent in red shoes and looking as though he would not be out of place in an All Black backline, matched his younger opponent in the big shot stakes.

Using his powerful two-handed backhand to good effect, Sluiter, aided by five second set aces, got home 6-3 6-4, with his only real problem in the fourth game of the second set when he was taken to deuce three times before winning to go ahead 3-1.

Sluiter later pointed to that game as a pivotal point.

"I had one tough service game but it was a great match for me in that I didn't lose my serve," said Sluiter who will now play Sanchez in the second round on Wednesday.

"It was solid match. He is a great player."

The only other singles match, a back court affair between two of the lower ranked players in the tournament produced an absorbing contest.

France's Gregory Carraz, on the back of a sometimes erratic serve and ranked 67 in the world, got up to beat Slovak Karol Beck in three sets.

Carraz served 14 aces but nullified that advantage with 16 double faults.

Beck kept himself in the match by taking the second set in a tiebreaker but only after winning the fifth game for 3-2 in a game stretched to 22 points.

The third set, punctuated by double faults, was won by Carraz 6-3 to book himself a second round clash with either fellow Frenchman Fabrice Santoro or Finnish eighth seed Jarkko Nieminen, who were to play first up on an outside court tomorrow morning.

There will be a New Zealand presence at the open until at least Wednesday, with the right-left handed combination of Nielsen and Simon Rea through to the doubles second round after beating the other New Zealand pairing of Daniel King-Turner and Matt Prentice in a match closer than the 6-3 6-4 scoreline might suggest.