Today was the start of the grass season, first stop is Queens Club in London. This marks the start of a month of grass court tennis and the month where the casual tennis fans come out to play and join us in the wonderful world of tennis for a short while.
This tournament is one of two warm up weeks before Wimbledon and as the players move from clay to the grass, it is a good time to get some match play. With players transitioning from the two different surfaces, who will have the best start and look the most confident going into Wimbledon?
The roster of stars this year is very impressive with so many big names choosing to participate in the prestigious tournament. Andy Murray, Tomas Berdych, Grigor Dimitrov, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and wildcard entrant Stan Wawrinka are just five of the stars entered into the tournament this year so it's sure to be a cracking first week of grass court tennis.
Day 1 of Queens saw a good day overall from a British perspective with both James Ward and Dan Evans picking up first round wins. British number three Ward opened the proceedings on centre court against his Slovenian opponent Blaz Rola. If you aren't familiar with players outside the top 50 in the world, Rola may be a new name to you but the Slovenian has shown over the past year that he is a solid player and he certainly didn't disgrace himself today.
This was Rola's first grass court main draw match so you would have expected nerves but he really impressed me with his play today. He definitely showed some grass court finesse and even though Ward had too much for him in the end winning 7-5 6-4, Rola should hold his head up high because he played really well today. Ward plays show-stopper Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov on centre court in the second round on Day 2.
There was an abundance of British action on centre court today with British number two Dan Evans following James Ward, playing against Austrian Jurgen Melzer. I think it's fair to say Melzer wasn't at his best today having recently come back from injury. Evans took advantage of this by serving well in his own service games and making inroads on Melzer's.
It was one set all. It all came down to a tiebreaker to decide the winner of the match. Melzer played an awful tiebreaker, making four errors in a row to hand the match to the Brit. If Melzer had been at his best, this match would have been simple for him but Evans prospered from the Austrian having a bad day to move into the second round. He now plays the big serving South African Kevin Anderson in the second round later today in the second match on centre court.
It wasn't such good news for the third Briton of the day wildcard Dan Cox. He made a fantastic start breaking Adrian Mannarino to give himself an advantage in the first set. It all came crashing down though when he came to serving out the set.
Mannarino broke back and didn't look back after that taking the set 7-5. He didn't stop there as he took full control, breaking the Lincoln born Brit immediately in the second set to wrestle the advantage showing what a talent he is. There was no stopping him from here on in winning 7-5 6-2.
Andy Murray's second round opponent on Wednesday was decided today as Paul-Henri Mathieu of France defeated Aljaz Bedene in the first round. Slovenian Bedene, who lives in the UK has recently expressed interest in switching nationalities to represent Great Britain.
It was a good day for Australia on the first day of grass season with Lleyton Hewitt, James Duckworth and Bernard Tomic all picking up first round wins. This was Tomic's first main draw win since January.
There were also opening day wins for Nicolas Mahut (FRA), Sergiy Stakhovsky (UKR), Denis Kudla, Sam Querrey (USA) and Kenny De Schepper (FRA)
Day 2 sees both British winners today in action again as well as Tomas Berdych, Marcos Baghdatis and Marin Cilic all opening their accounts. Andy Murray will start the defence of his title on Wednesday