Laura Robson celebrated her 16th birthday today by winning her women’s doubles first-round match at the Australian Open. Laura partnered Australia’s Sally Peers to beat Americans Jill Craybas and Abigail Spears 6-3 7-5. The match was played on Court Five in front of a very large and very noisy crowd, the locals obviously trying to win over Laura, who remember was born in Melbourne.

“They (the crowd) get into it. At Wimbledon they certainly don’t make chants up for every change of ends. It was pretty interesting. I was handed a certificate to sign to be an Australian as well but they said if I wanted my birthday present I had to sign it, so I didn’t.”

Happy Birthday Laura!

As you all will no doubt have heard Laura was handed a wildcard into the qualifying for the main women’s draw of the 2010 Australian Open. We now have some pictures from her second round match against Michaella Krajicek of the Netherlands.

Unfortunately Laura was defeated in straight sets 6-4, 7-6 (9/7), her opponent though was once one of the top 30 players in the world, so it was never an easy task. Remember that although she won’t be appearing in the womens’ event, she will still be competing for the Junior title, where she is in fact one of the favourites to win. Keep an eye on the site for updates on how she is doing with that. For now you can check out our 2010 Australian Open qualifying image gallery.

First of all, my apologies for not keeping this blog up to date with Laura’s (and Andy’s) progress through the Hopman Cup. Unfortunately I’ve just not had the time to keep up with it all myself, let alone the website.

As you probably know, Laura played amazingly well in the tournament and went on to reach the final. Partnering world no. 4 Andy Murray in the mixed doubles decider, they eventually lost the match 7-6 (8/6), 7-5 to Spain’s Maria Jose Martinez Sanchez and Tommy Robredo. You can read more about the results of the tournament and the matches they played to reach the final on the official Hopman Cup website.

Now I have been able to upload quite a lot of pictures of Laura Robson from the tournament, you can view all of these in our Hopman Cup image gallery.