Tennis:Home favourite Rafael Nadal booked his spot in the third round of the Madrid Open this afternoon with victory over Ukrainian qualifier Oleksandr Dolgopolov.
Nadal, with Real Madrid players past and present in Cristiano Ronaldo, Raul and Zinedine Zidane watching on courtside, did not have it easy against his 21-year-old opponent but progressed through 6-4 6-3.
The world number three, seeded two in the Spanish capital, will now face giant American John Isner, who had a real battle before getting past Colombian qualifier Santiago Giraldo.
The 6ft 9in Isner, the 13th seed, was swept aside in the first set by Giraldo but bounced back to win 1-6 7-6 (8/6) 6-3.
Earlier in the day, three men’s seeds waved farewell to the competition with number five Andy Roddick, number 10 Mikhail Youzhny and number 16 Thomaz Bellucci the men to go.
Youzhny lost 7-6 (7/2) 6-4 to Ernests Gulbis, Bellucci was beaten 6-2 6-2 by Juan Monaco while Roddick withdrew just prior to his match with Feliciano Lopez due to illness.
Roddick, who managed to play his opening doubles match yesterday but lost a lengthy contest, said today: “I got here, and then on Sunday night through Monday evening I was up with a stomach virus. I was up for 24 hours vomiting, sweating, the whole deal.”
The 27-year-old, who had not played since winning his second title of the year in Miami back in April, admits the timing could hardly have been worse with the French Open coming up later this month.
“It’s very bad timing. I would’ve taken this virus any time in the last five weeks instead of now, but I guess that’s the way it goes sometimes,” he said.
Oscar Hernandez, who lost to Christophe Rochus in the final qualifying round, took Roddick’s place against Lopez but he made little impact against his fellow Spaniard, losing 6-1 6-2.
In other second-round matches, 15th seed Stanislas Wawrinka set up a third-round showdown with world number one and Swiss compatriot Roger Federer after getting past Leonardo Mayer, who was trailing 6-4 4-2 when he retired.
Wawrinka and Federer teamed up to win the 2008 Olympic doubles title in Beijing.
Eighth seed Marin Cilic had few problems in seeing off Eduardo Schwank 6-3 6-0 while 12th seed Gael Monfils booked his spot in the third round when German opponent Philipp Petzschner retired with the scores at 1-1 in the first set.
In the women’s event, seventh seed Jelena Jankovic defeated fellow Serbian Ana Ivanovic 4-6 6-4 6-1 to progress through to the third round and she was joined by Arantxa Parra Santanja, who also recovered from a set down to beat fellow wildcard Shuai Peng 1-6 7-6 (7/1) 6-3.