Agencies Sydney, January 11
As if a horror Australian Open draw wasn't enough, now Bernard Tomic has been stripped of his Sydney International crown as well.Clubbing winner after winner, a merciless Juan Martin del Potro added to Tomic's woes with a 6-3, 6-1 shellacking in Saturday night's final at Sydney Olympic Park. Tomic's heavy defeat ended his nine-match winning streak at the venue and cannot have filled the 21-year-old with much confidence ahead of his dreaded first-round Open showdown with world-number-one Rafael Nadal on Tuesday. All business, Del Potro did not give the defending champion a sniff, dropping six points on serve all match. He raced through the first set in 26 minutes, breaking Tomic in the seventh and ninth games as the Australian struggled to cope with the world-number-five's ferocious forehand. Any hopes of a fightback like in his plucky semi-final win over Sergiy Stakhovsky were scuppered when Tomic dropped serve for a third time to fall behind 3-1 in the second set. The former US Open champion thundered down his fifth and sixth aces the following game to consolidate the break for a 4-1 lead and there was no way back for Tomic. Completely dispirited, Tomic dropped his next service game to love before Del Potro served out the match after just 53 minutes. Del Potro's victory was his 23rd straight as a top seed, the big Argentine adding the Sydney trophy to titles accrued in Basel, Tokyo, Washington and Vienna as the tournament favourite.