Perhaps one player Roger Federer didn’t want to see in the first round was Feliciano Lopez.  Lopez pushed Federer to 3 tiebreaks in Madrid to win.  Federer did have a break opportunity to take it in straight sets.  Despite this, I figured Federer would feel more confident playing Lopez and not be as vulnerable to a loss the second time around.  Federer played a bit steadier than he does outside the Slams and did well enough to win in straight sets: 6-3, 6-4, 7-6.

Monfils dropped a set to unheralded German, Bjorn Phau, but took the next three sets, the last at love to avoid the upset bug that eliminated Cilic.

In the biggest upset of the day, erratic Tomas Berdych lost in 5 sets to Stephane Robert, despite being up 2 sets to love.  Robert was able to take advantage of Berdych’s movement (or trouble moving) and a partisan French crowd to engineer a late break and take the fifth set, 9-7.

While Monfils won his match, fellow Frenchman, Michael Llodra lost in four sets to Belgian, Steve Darcis.  The closest player to a true serve and volley player, Llodra lost each set at 3 and was unable to find answers to beat the Belgian veteran.

Richard Gasquet, who has been trying to come back after being exonerated from cocaine charges, has worked his ranking up to 13 in the world.  He reached the semis of Rome and has been playing more aggressive these days.  He took on trick Radek Stepanek who has played sporadically over the last year and took him out in straight sets.

Stepanek’s countryman, Ivo Karlovic, who also had played sporadically took on Juan Martin del Potro.  Karlovic actually took the first set off del Potro and there was concern whether del Potro could handle the big game of Karlovic.  Karlovic is hard to beat on his first serve and he usually has a high first serve percentage.  He forces you to perform on his second serve.  Fortunately, del Potro was up to the task.  del Potro won in 4 sets.

Thomaz Bellucci needed four close sets to beat Andrey Golubev.  Davydenko had a comfortable straight set win over Gremelmayr of Germany.  Andreev won his match in straight sets.

Mardy Fish won his match in four sets over veteran, Ricardo Mello, of Brazil.  He is currently 10 in the world.

Murray and Nadal headline the top men’s matches on Day 3.