Rafael Nadal secured a smooth passage through to the Australian Open third round with a straight-sets win over Yannick Hanfmann.
The German qualifier put up a good fight on Rod Laver Arena, including saving four match points, but sixth seed Nadal took his fifth chance to clinch a 6-2 6-3 6-4 victory after two hours and 42 minutes.
Nadal, the only former champion left in the men’s draw in Melbourne, is tied on 20 majors with Roger Federer and world No 1 Novak Djokovic, who are both absent from the tournament.
The Spaniard hit 30 winners against Hanfmann and broke his opponent’s serve four times in the match while saving both breakpoints he faced.
Nadal needed five match points before sealing victory when Hanfmann sent a forehand long. The sixth seed will next meet either Russian Karen Khachanov or Benjamin Bonzi of France for a place in the fourth round.
In the women’s draw, top-ranked Ash Barty breezed through her second round encounter to reach round three for the sixth consecutive year.
Barty cruised past 142nd-ranked qualifier Lucia Bronzetti 6-1, 6-1 in under an hour Tuesday at Rod Laver Arena. She dropped just one game in her first-round match, which also took less than an hour, as she bids to become the first Australian woman since 1978 to win the country’s Grand Slam tournament.
She is already a two-time major champion, with trophies at the French Open in 2019 and Wimbledon last year.
Next up for Barty will be a matchup against another Italian, 30th-seeded Camila Giorgi. Barty could end up in a fourth-round showdown against defending champion Naomi Osaka.
Eighth-seeded Paula Badosa has moved into the third round with a 6-0, 6-3 win over Italian qualifier Martina Trevisan in Rod Laver Arena.
Badosa won the title at a Sydney warm-up tournament last week, when she put together back-to-back match wins in Australia for the first time.
In other early second-round results on Day 3 of the year’s first tennis Grand Slam event, two-time Australian Open champion Victoria Azarenka beat Jil Teichmann 6-1, 6-2, and No. 30 Camila Giorgi beat Tereza Martincova 6-2, 7-6 (2).
