Aussie Women fly the flag at Indian Wells on opening day

On the opening day of main draw action here in Indian Wells, we started with a contingent of eight Australians, with four sealing a spot in round two, with three victories coming from our Aussie women.

Kimberly Birrell took care of Oskana Selekhmeteva 6-1, 6-4 to produce her ninth main draw win for 2026, the leader of all our Aussie women this year, to set up a third opportunity to try and take the scalp of fast-rising Canadian teen Victoria Mboko (10) in the second round.

Ajla Tomljanovic after a momentum swinging first set put the foot down in set two, defeating Romania's Elena-Gabriela Ruse 7-5, 6-2 to set up a second round match up with Chinese 30th seed Xinyu Wang. Ruse had defeated her at this year's Australian Open.

And 21-year-old Talia Gibson in her WTA 1000 main draw debut, took down world No.38 Ann Li of the USA 6-3, 7-5 to be as close as she ever has been (up to 101 in the live rankings) to cracking the top 100. She will next face 11th seed Ekaterina Alexandrova.

On the mens side, Adam Walton, who needed a confidence booster, was our sole winner by getting his first win over Frenchman Quentin Halys in his third attempt 6-3, 6-3 to set up a showdown with 25th seed Learner Tien (USA) in round two.

Listen to The First Serve Live every Monday at 8pm AEDT in its 18th year on the SEN Network/App, Australia's only dedicated weekly tennis program on commercial radio running through till the end of November.

Our other four men all bowed out; Alexei Popyrin to American Jenson Brooksby 6-3, 6-4, James Duckworth 6-2, 6-4 to Czech qualifier Dalibor Svrcina, Chris O'Connell to Marton Fucsovics 7-5, 6-3 and Tristan Schoolkate to fellow qualifier Dino Prizmic 7-6, 3-6, 7-5.

Watch The First Serve's full recap here.

It continues a very lean start to the year for our Aussie men in general.

Friday AEDT, Rinky Hijikata vs. fellow qualifier Francesco Maestrelli (ITA) and Storm Hunter vs Poland's Magdalena Frech will kick off their singles campaigns.

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