Rafael Nadal eased into the third round of the Rome Masters as he ended the hopes of home favourite Andreas Seppi.
Straights win for Federer, Davydenko and Tsonga dumped out
Rafael Nadal eased into the third round of the Rome Masters as he ended the hopes of home favourite Andreas Seppi.
The Italian put in a decent display and was competitive for long spells, but still could not seriously trouble Nadal as the world number one ran out a 6-2 6-3 winner in an hour and 19 minutes.
Seppi started the match in fine style, catching Nadal cold to break him to 30 in the opening game of the contest.
But that served just to focus the Spaniard who immediately broke back and although Seppi held in his next to make the scoreline 2-2, he did not win another game in the set as Nadal moved through the gears to take it 6-2 with two further breaks.
Seppi hung in doggedly at the start of the second and produced some rasping winners of both flanks as the first seven games of the set went with serve.
But almost inevitably, Nadal secured the break he needed in the eighth game.
Seppi had moved 30-0 ahead, but Nadal wore him down and clinched the break with a delicate drop-shot with his opponent stranded at the back of the court.
He followed it up with a delightful cross-court pass on the run to win the first point of the next game and served out with relative ease to book his place in the next round.
Fed coasts through
World number two Roger Federer also enjoyed a straight sets victory on Wednesday as he saw off big-serving Craot Ivo Karlovic 6-4 6-4.
A single break early in each set was enough for the Swiss star as he improved his career record against Karlovic to 8-1 in little over an hour.
"I got off to a good start in both sets, which is always good, kind of comforting against Ivo," Federer stated afterwards. "He found his groove later on, on his serve but I already had the break in the second, which is perfect.
"It was just important to be really solid on my serve. I had two close service games in the beginning. From then on, I was pretty much cruising."
Elsewhere, there were wins for Stanislas Wawrinka, Fernando Verdasco, Tommy Robredo, Marin Cilic and Fernando Gonzalez, but two more seeds bit the dust as Nikolay Davydenko lost to Jurgen Melzer 7-5 7-6 (7-5) and Richard Gasquet got the better of compatriot Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in their all-French clash winning 7-6 (7-2) 6-4.
