DUBAI // Arriving here only on the morning of his first-round match from Marseille, Nick Kyrgios overcame the conditions and an in-form opponent, the seventh seed Martin Klizan, to book his place in the second round with a 3-6, 6-3, 6-2 win.
The Australian, who won his first ATP World Tour title on Sunday by defeating Marin Cilic in Marseille, found the transition to the outdoors a bit tough at the start and dropped the first set.
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But he fought back to clinch the second set and cruised to a 3-0 lead in the third, before Klizan, the Rotterdam winner, broke to end his six-game winning streak.
Kyrgios, though, was unstoppable by then and cruised through for a second-round clash against Mikhail Kukushkin.
“I only arrived this morning and I was not feeling 100 per cent,” Kyrgios said. “The conditions are so different here, the balls really fly. So it was a really tough match against a form player and I am just happy I got through.”
Earlier, Spanish fourth seed Roberto Bautista Agut brushed aside Italian Simone Bolelli 6-2, 6-4 to set a second-round match with South Korean teenager Hyeon Chung.
“It’s gonna be a difficult match,” said Bautista Agut, who has started the season with titles in Auckland and Sofia. “He’s a very good player on hard court. He has a really good backhand and he moves well.”
Indian wild-card Yuki Bhambri, the 2009 Australian Open junior winner, should have been in the second round, too, but he wasted three match points in the second set after winning the first 6-2 against Lukas Rosol, and the Czech eventually triumphed 2-6, 7-6, 6-0 to set up a clash with No 6 seed Feliciano Lopez.
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