A walk in the park: Jannik Sinner makes lightwork of James Duckworth as title defence ramps up

Jannik Sinner continues to make very solid progress through the Australian Open as he safely found a way past James Duckworth 6-1, 6-4, 6-2.

As expected, the world number two is finding no trouble in bypassing these early stages against lower opposition, not just winning but making it look routinely simple. He was not under pressure for any of the match, with him surviving four break points while creating numerous chances of his own, in which he was ruthless in converting.

Sinner pinned 18 aces throughout the match, which included one to finish it upon. He won 85% of first serve points. The unforced errors count proves a large gap, with Sinner tallying 17 compared to Duckworth's 33, as well as winners in which the 24-year-old topped 31 to 23.

The full force of Sinner was felt from a very early stage for the Aussie. Even in the one game he won he was pushed all the way. From 1-1, there was no let-up as he executed out a very satisfying set of tennis. He took his second break point to make it 3-1 before the same events occurred two games later to allow for Sinner to serve out the set. He did this with the upmost of ease to take a one set lead.

That first set only took 26 minutes, and if Duckworth wanted to spend some more time in front of his home crowd on Rod Laver Arena, he had to up his level. He showed some fight in the second set, even having the chance to take a 2-0 lead but was unable to convert this sole opportunity.

If he was going to to get anything out of the match, these has to be taken clinically. After both players held to love, Sinner looked like he was going to make it three on the spin, but for a break. Duckworth forced the game to go to deuce and just went ahead again. Sinner finally found the break needed to take the second set in a three-game spurt which saw him go from 3-2 down to 5-3 in front. Similar to the first set, he had no troubles in getting the job done.

Sinner was not going to let his foot off the pedal, breaking at the start of the third set before eventually managing to get over the line for a 3-0 lead. A second double fault for Sinner gave Duckworth another chance, but his wayward effort was met by a frustrated Duckworth, who went on to miss another chance as the four-time Grand Slam winner finally made it 4-0.

A significant hold to love got the crowd on their feet once more, but it would take a lot more than that to get Sinner unsettled. He had to wait a bit longer to get the job done after Duckworth had one last moment to get one over the former world number one, but in the end Sinner was too good and will join the big names, including Carlos Alcaraz, in the third round. Sinner's next task in his quest for a hat-trick of Australian Open titles will come against Eliot Spizzirri.