Sixth seed Alexander Zverev lost his cool en route to a fighting win over American Marcos Giron in the opening round of Australian Open 2021 on Monday. After losing the first set 6-7 (8), the German lost his cool after being broken in the next but regained his composure to win 7-6 (5), 6-3, 6-2 and advance to the second round.

Zverev’s racquet took the brunt of his ire as he smashed it repeatedly on the court and later on said tiredness may have hampered his progress early on. The 23-year-old was involved in lengthy matches against Novak Djokovic and Daniil Medvedev last weekend during the ATP Cup.

He was leading 5-3 and serving for the set when world No 75 Giron broke him prompting the reaction.

“He played incredibly I think,” Zverev said of Giron. “He knew to be on this stage against a top-10 player he needed to come out firing. He had me on the ropes there, especially in the second set. It could have gone either way… I’m happy to get through and in the end I started playing better.

“The first round of a Slam is never easy… my body was a little bit fatigued, but this is a Slam, you don’t have easy opponents. Sometimes it’s just what you have to do, you’ve just got to win the matches,” he added.

Zverev is bidding for a maiden Grand Slam title having earlier come closer to winning one at the US Open last year where he lost to Dominic Thiem in the final. He will next face either Taro Daniel or Maxime Cressy.

Meanwhile, world No 11 Gael Monfils suffered an upset defeat to Finnish youngster Emil Ruusuvuori to exit in the first round. Ruusuvuori won in four sets 6-4, 7-5, 3-6, 6-3 and will next face either Yoshihito Nishioka or Pedro Martinez in the second round.

In other news, another hotel quarantine coronavirus case has been reported in Victoria but the tournament director Craig Tiley says the event will be unaffected. “We are confident that it’s going to be an unbelievable two weeks of tennis. We’ve been through the journey, we’ve got mitigating circumstances if we need to,” he said.