By Mikhil Bhat/Doha


There were no surprises on day one of the Qatar Total Open as seeds ran through their opposition to reach the second round.
While the Danish 10th seed Caroline Wozniacki downed Mervana Jugic-Salkic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in an hour, 13th seed Ana Ivanovic of Serbia took a little over an hour to send her Austrian opponent Tamira Paszek packing; with identical scorelines of 6-1 6-2.
“You know, it’s always tough to play a first match and tough to play an opponent you haven’t played before,” Wozniacki said after the match. “I just tried to focus on my own game and felt like I served well, returned well. I was happy.”
Wozniacki had a see-saw of a 2012 having lost 10 places between January and August. With her father, Piotr, back by her side, after the US Open, her results improved with a win-loss record of 18-3 and she sneaked back into the top 10 for her fourth straight season.
“I felt like I needed the calmness, and it felt like I needed just people around me that have always been there. That’s the most important thing for me, you know, that I don’t start, you know, feeling unsure,” she said.
“So, for me, that was a choice (getting her father back in the team) that I had to make again.”
While the Danish star was playing her opponent for the first time, Ivanovic improved her head-to-head record against Paszek to 3-1. Ivanovic’s only defeat against the Austrian was a three-setter in Montreal in 2008.
Ivanovic struggled a bit — with her first serve and also with the chill in the wind. “Practicing during day and playing now (in the evening), they are two different things really,” she said after the match.
What would have made things difficult for her would have been her sore shoulder, an injury that she aggravated during practice in Melbourne after the Australian Open.
“I smell like heat cream,” she said with a smile when asked about the shoulder. “I have to still take care of my shoulder and do treatments every day, but it’s been already sore in Pattaya and I kind of tried to push through there. I felt like it was too much risk playing Fed Cup as well with a sore shoulder. I tried to take some time off and come healthy here. And still, it’s a process, but it’s feeling a lot better.”
In other matches of the day, Omani wild card Fatma al-Nabhani could not go beyond the first round after France’s Caroline Garcia beat the 21-year-old 6-2 6-3.