Paris: King of clay-court, Rafael Nadal, once again had a shaky start at the French Open in chilly weather of Paris on Friday before he bounced back to register an emphatic win to make his way to the third round. Nadal will now go head to head against the Italian 27th seed Fabio Fognini for a place in the last 16.
Nadal's second round match was one of nine not completed on Thursdaybecause of rain. But Spaniard continued to attest his supremacy on the clay court as he knocked out Slovakia's Martin Klizan 4-6, 6-3, 6-3, 6-3 to record his 54th win in 55 matches at the tournament.
Just like his previous encounters in this year French Open, he failed to get a good start because of cold weather which was gauzing around 12 degrees. He dropped the first set against the Klizan by 4-6. But the start of the second set he got back into the rhythm and didn’t give much opportunity to his opponent. Klizan lost the second set by 3-6.
Slovakian started to crumble against Nadal and made back to back errors and fouls which cost him crucial game points in the mid of the third set. He lost the opportunity to nail down Nadal for three to four times and that allowed a champion player like Nadal to crush his morale by stroking some accurate backhands to wrap up the third set by 6-3.
As the match stretched to fourth set, Nadal dropped the serve twice, the second time in the seventh game as he served for the match.
Meanwhile, the Second seed Roger Federer reached the French Open last 16on Friday with a 6-3, 6-4, 7-5 win over France's 30th seed Julien Benneteau.
Federer started off well by winning the opening set by 6-3 but he made some frequent errors in the second set which allowed Julien to give him some tough time on the court.
Final set of the match went down to the wire because of the late resilience shown by French but he finally lost it by 5-7 and Federer made his way to the final 16 of the French open.
Federer, the 2009 champion, next faces either Sam Querrey of the United States or Gilles Simon of France for a quarter-final place
