Tennis Atlantic

Berankis, Johnson, Mannarino Headline #AusOpen Men’s Qualifiers

The 16 Aussie Open men’s qualifiers were set Friday night after the four day qualifying tournament. Here is the list, along with who they play in the main draw starting tonight East Coast time.

Arnau Brugues-Davi beat Jan-Lennard Struff and will play Feliciano Lopez

Daniel Munoz-De La Nava beat Jan Mertl and will play Sam Querrey

Alex Bogomolov beat Michael Yani and will play Brian Baker

Cedrik-Marcel Stebe beat Tim Smyzcek and will play Stanislas Wawrinka

Julian Reister beat James Ward and will play Guillmane Rufin

Lucky loser Tim Smyzcek will play Ivo Karlovic

Maxime Authom beat Florent Serra and will play Carlos Berlocq

Steve Johnson beat Ryan Sweeting and will play Nicolas Almagro

Ruben Bemelmans beat Marsel Ilhan and will play Edouard Roger-Vasselin

Adrian Mannarino beat Peter Polansky and will play Juan Martin Del Potro

Adrian Menendez-Macerias beat Denys Molchanov and will play Jeremy Chardy

Rajeev Ram beat Marco Chiudinelli and will play Guillermo Garcia-Lopez

Ricardas Berankis  beat Paul Capdeville and will play Sergiy Stakhovsky

Jamie Baker beat Donald Young and will play Lukas Rosol

Amir Weintraub beat Diego Sebastian Schwartzman and will play Guido Pella

Dudi Sela beat Michael Berrer and will play Nikolay Davydenko

Daniel Brands beat Javier Marti and will play Martin Klizan

The guys with the best chances at moving deeper in the tournament are Bemelmans and Berankis, both of whom play well on hard courts and are playing strongly. They should both be favored in their first round matchups, and Berankis will have a good chance at a R3 meeting with Andy Murray. Brands (who gets a slumping Klizan), Weintraub and Ram will also have punchers chances at upsets. Stebe will get a rematch of Chennai with Wawrinka, while Sela will be interesting against fellow veteran Davydenko.

Give credit to Jamie Baker, who is one of the good comeback stories on the tennis tour right now.

—S. Kirby