Barclays Dubai Championships gallery, Day 2
Originally published on: 26/02/10 15:28
The highlight of Tuesdays day session in Dubai was undoubtedly the French-Russian clash between Richard Gasquet and Marat Safin.
After the many withdrawals prior to this weeks $2.2 million event in the UAE, it was wild card Safin who was the pre-match favourite as the eighth seed.
Gasquet has been playing some good ball so far this year though and it was the 22-year-old from Beziers that came through 6-3, 5-7, 6-3. Maybe Marat’s new crew cut was to blame for his fading strength as the contest wore on…
Gasquets reward is a second round date with Italian Simone Bolelli, who put out Serb Viktor Troiki 6-3, 6-4 on Tuesday.
For a while it looked like third seed Gilles Simon would be joining Safin on the scrapheap when he trailed by a set to Kuwaiti world No.469 Mohammed Ghareeb.
Simon stuck to the task admirably, however, and eventually came through 5-7, 6-4, 6-4 to set up a second round meeting with Russian Teimuraz Gabashvili.
In the first match of the evening session top seed Novak Djokovic got down to business as he eased through his first match of the week.
The world no.3 was too good for Italian Flavio Cipolla and came through 6-3, 6-2 in an hour and 38 minutes.
German Philipp Kohlschreiber is also into round two after he eased past Swiss qualifier Michael Lammer 6-1, 6-1 to book a second round test against fourth seed David Ferrer.
Frances Julien Benneteau and Jan Hernych from the Czech Republic got through their first round tests by beating Austrian Jurgen Melzer and Russian Mikhail Youzhny respectively.
Late in the afternoon another Russian, sixth seed Igor Andreev, went through when he hammered South African Rik De Voest 6-4, 6-0, and Frenchman Arnaud Clement earned himself a shot at second seed Andy Murray in the last 16 by beating Germanys Rainer Schuettler in three.
The evening session on day two sees top seed Novak Djokovic take on Italian Flavio Cipolla before Russian Dmitry Tursunov faces another Italian, Andreas Seppi.
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