Day 3 saw most of the seeds progressing fairly easily.  Rafael Nadal took on Lukas Lacko and found himself a 6-2, 6-2, 6-2 winner.  Given his struggles in the first round, Nadal found himself striking the ball better.  Darren Cahill commented that Nadal had played around with a different forehand and serve motion in London which lead to three round robin losses.  Going back to the way he used to hit the shots, Nadal showed the kind of confidence that allowed him to win last year.  The biggest difference might be footspeed.  Nadal, at this point, seems content not to run every shot down, but at this point, he doesn’t need to go all out, every point, and can pick and choose his points.

Andy Roddick continues to win using a fairly conservative strategy, basically being steadier than his opponent.  Roddick doesn’t serve a ton of aces anymore.  He doesn’t go for big groundstroke winners.  He does, however, play just aggressive enough, come to net enough, and plays patient enough to make opponents cough up errors.  Thomaz Bellucci look talented enough, but still lost 6-3, 6-4, 6-4.  Andy Roddick is playing sharp and within himself.

Among other straight set winners are: Andy Murray over Marc Giquel, Gael Monfils over Antonio Veic, Fernando Gonzalez over Turk, Marsel Ilhan, Wawrinka over Russian, Igor Kunitsyn, John Isner over Irish, Louk Sorensen.

In a minor upset, Kazakhstan’s Evgeny Korolev had a straight set win over Thomas Berdych of the Czech Republic  Andrey Golubev wasn’t able to pull another Kazakhi upset and lost in four sets to Ivan Ljubicic of Croatia.

Big serving Ivo Karlovic beat Frenchman Julien Benneteau in four sets.  Karlovic had beaten Radek Stepanek in the first round in five sets, and is clearly a dangerous floater.  He’ll play his countryman, Ljubicic, in the third round. Finland’s best player, Jarkko Nieminen, lost in 5 sets to Florent Serra of France.  Feliciano Lopez beat veteran Rainer Schuettler in four sets.  Schuettler had beaten Sam Querrey in the first round.

The biggest match of the day was a epic battle between Juan Martin del Potro and James Blake.  Blake has seen his ranking plummet and calls for him to retire.  Last year, Blake parted with longtime coach, Brian Barker, and is now being coached by friend and former player, Kelly Jones.  Several keys to the match for Blake.  Blake is an attacker and takes his chances, and he attacked the Delpo second serve and went after the forehand and came to net.

Given Blake’s new coach and his obvious talent, and given Delpo’s gimpy wrist, a few thought that perhaps Blake could pull the upset off.  On paper, Delpo looks the big favorite, given the recent fortunes of both players, but given this situation, perhaps an upset was brewing.

After Delpo won the first set, Blake showed his new resolve, took the second set in a tiebreak, then a third set, but Delpo came back with the third set, 6-3.  Blake had an early break in the fifth set, and it seemed maybe the upset could happen, but del Potro showed toughness, a trait that lead him to the US Open title, and he broke Blake late to win 10-8 in the fifth and avoid being the highest seed to lose.

On Day 4, we’ve got another full slate of matches.  Novak Djokovic plays a Swiss.  Not the two big guns from Switzerland, but Marco Chiudinelli.  Donald Young, who has perhaps his best Slam ever, got through qualifying and won a round, and now gets Australia’s Lleyton Hewitt.  Hewitt is allegedly not 100%, but he fights as well as anyone.  If Young is hoping to make a late splash in his career, he’ll want to look for the upset here.   The history of both players suggest that this chance isn’t very good.

Roger Federer hopes for an easier match against Victor Hanescu after narrowly escaping a first round match which threatened to go to a fifth set.  In an intriguing match, Cypriot Marcos Baghdatis is playing the Spanish speedster, David Ferrer.  Jo-Wilfried Tsonga will play serve-and-volleying American, Taylor Dent.  Fernando Verdasco hopes to replicate last year’s success by beating Ivan Sergeyev of Ukraine.  Another Ukranian, Illya Marchenko, will take on perhaps the hottest player on tour, Nikolay Davydenko.

Another Russian, Mikhail Youzhny, who survived a tough five setter against Richard Gasquet, a match that found both of them cramping, takes on Czech, Jan Hajek, in the second round.

Australians are hoping their top hope, Bernard Tomic (who has a running spat with Lleyton Hewitt), can do well against the player some think might have a breakthrough Open, Marin Cilic.

So far, the top seeds are still playing like the top seeds.  Nadal, Murray, and Roddick had easy matches.  del Potro had the toughest match, but still won in 5 sets.

Day 4 promises more exciting matches, so keep on watching!