Davydenko, Ferrer on the move

2008-05-13 19:42

Hamburg - Nikolay Davydenko and David Ferrer moved smartly into the third round of the Hamburg Masters on Tuesday, while Tommy Robredo came back from the brink to win a first-round thriller against Philipp Kohlschreiber.

Davydenko, the Russian fourth seed, helped himself to a 6-4 6-1 victory over Croatia's Ivan Ljubicic, while Spain's Ferrer, seeded fifth, was equally impressive in a 6-3 6-3 win over Ivo Minar of the Czech Republic.

Robredo, who had the best win of his career when he took the title in Hamburg in 2006, lost the first set and was two points away from defeat when he fell a break down in the second-set tie-break.

The Spaniard recovered, thanks to a couple of poor serves from German hope Kohlschreiber, and held his nerve at the end of the decider to take his third match point and win 2-6 7-6 6-3.

Though that was the outstanding match, the best individual display on the red clay came from Davydenko, who served beautifully and took advantage of a stream of unforced errors from Ljubicic to seal an easy win in one hour 24 minutes.

The world number four has one Masters Series title to his name already this season, after beating Nadal in the final on a hard court in Miami, and he has made a decent start to the clay-court season.

"Playing in Miami was much easier for me than playing on clay but maybe winning that tournament has helped mentally," Davydenko said at a news conference.

"My tennis is still the same but when you feel good you try to make more winners."

Easy win

In another second-round match early on Tuesday, Spain's Fernando Verdasco had an even easier win as he saw off Frenchman Michael Llodra 6-2 6-0.

Two first-round matches were cut short by injury in what has become a familiar story over the last few weeks in Europe.

Luis Horna of Peru and Kristof Vliegen of Belgium were the latest players forced to pull out against, respectively, the Italian Potito Starace and Jose Acasuso of Argentina.

At last week's Masters in Rome both semi-finals were decided by retirements through injury.

Rafael Nadal has led players' complaints about this year's calendar, which has had three clay-court Masters Series events, plus Barcelona, crammed into four weeks.

"Maybe it's the ATP we have to thank for giving us a calendar like this," Nadal told reporters when asked about the run of retirements.

Top seeds Roger Federer and Nadal are not in action until Wednesday.

- Reuters