Victor Hanescu Loses Opener At Paris Masters, While Tomas Berdych Advances

Image by y.caradec via Flickr

The opening round matches at the 2009 ATP World Tour Paris Masters 1000 event produced some exciting tennis with Romanian star Victor Hanescu losing the opening round to Albert Montanes in a tough three setter.

Th Spaniard, who reached the quarterfinals at the recently held Open Tenis Valencia, lost the opening set rather handily, but bounced back to win the next two with some power hitting from the baseline to register the 3-6, 6-3, 7-6(3) win in two hours and 7 minutes of play.

Meanwhile, former champion Tomas Berdych made it to the next round with a straight sets dispatching of French qualifier Vincent Millot, winning the 6-3, 7-6(4) match in just 85 minutes.

In the other matches of the day, Italian Andreas Seppi beat German Philipp Kohlschreiber 6-3, 6-3 well within an hour and joined tall Croat Ivo Karlovic, who took out Uruguayan Pablo Cuevas 7-6(3), 6-4.

Other winners of the day included Serbian Viktor Troicki, Pole Lukasz Kubot and American James Blake, who all registered contrasting wins over their respective opponents to move to the next round.