{"id":416382,"date":"2026-01-16T07:26:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T07:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/416382\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T07:26:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T07:26:07","slug":"day-1-schedule-of-play-released-for-ao-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/416382\/","title":{"rendered":"Day 1 schedule of play released for AO 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Two-time Australian Open women&#8217;s singles champion Aryna Sabalenka and men&#8217;s top seed Carlos Alcaraz headline the action for the night session of Day 1 of Australian Open 2026 on Sunday.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/ausopen.com\/schedule#!43225\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">MORE: Day 1 schedule of play<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Sabalenka, winner of AO 2023 and AO 2024 before going down to American Madison Keys in the final last year, begins her quest for a fifth career major against French wildcard Tiantsoa Rakotomanga Rajaonah, while Alcaraz &#8211; chasing victory at the only major he&#8217;s yet to win &#8211; steps out against Australia&#8217;s Adam Walton in the second night match at Rod Laver Arena.<\/p>\n<p>The RLA day session begins with women&#8217;s seventh seed Jasmine Paolini against qualifier Aliaksandra Sasnovich, with an intriguing first-round men&#8217;s match between last year&#8217;s runner-up Alexander Zverev and Canadian Gabriel Diallo to follow.<\/p>\n<p>Men&#8217;s 18th seed Francisco Cerundolo takes on China&#8217;s Zhizhen Zhang on a Sunday slate at Margaret Court Arena that also features 2021 US Open champion and 28th seed Emma Raducanu and men&#8217;s 10th seed Alexander Bublik.<\/p>\n<p>At John Cain Arena (not before 5pm), American 29th seed Frances Tiafoe meets Australian qualifier Jason Kubler before 45-year-old Venus Williams, making her first Melbourne Park appearance since 2021, plays Serbia&#8217;s Olga Danilovic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two-time Australian Open women&#8217;s singles champion Aryna Sabalenka and men&#8217;s top seed Carlos Alcaraz headline the action for&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411965,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-416382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=416382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416382\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}