With no Spaniards playing, veterans of the game like Baghdatis, Haas, Nalbandian, Malisse, Llodra and Davydenko triumphed before the top seeds took to the court.
The first round matches in the first ATP World Tour Masters 1000 event of the season, Indian Wells, have drawn to a close. After Pablo Andújar, Albert Ramos and Guillermo García-López all qualified on Thursday night/Friday morning, yesterday there were no Spaniards in action, but there were a lot of seasoned players from the world of tennis playing.
Players who have clocked up plenty of court miles, some of who have prestigious titles to their names and still possess oodles of class, helped to make up the list of 64 competitors for the second round, which already contained the 32 tournament seeds. Russia’s Nikolay Davydenko beat the Ukraine’s Sergei Bubka in two sets (7-5, 6-3) and now faces France’s Gaël Monfils (14 seed), while Jo-Wilfried Tsonga (6 seed) will dispute an all-French affair against Michaël Llodra, who had to dig deep to beat Latvia’s Ernests Gulbis in three sets. Llodra took the first set 6-3, lost the second one 5-7 and won the definitive one 7-3 in a tiebreak.
David Nalbandian suffered in the first set, but his quality came to fore in the second against Italy’s Potito Starace, who he ended up beating 6-7, 0-6. Marcos Baghdatis won his match 3-6, 4-6 against France’s Jérémy Chardy and will now take on Feliciano López (15 seed). Veteran Tommy Haas did away with Finland’s Jarkko Nieminen with the score reading 6-7, 4-6 in an equal match. Haas will play Marcel Granollers next.
Beginning at 20:00pm tonight 16 of the 32 clashes in the second round will get under way. Albert Ramos will take on Richard Gasquet, Nicolás Almagro faces Sam Querrey, Pablo Andujar plays Florian Mayer and Guillermo García-López goes toe-to-toe with Andy Murray on the last day.
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