Looking every bit like a sandy brown Apollo Ohno, soul patch included, or perhaps that faithful stoner buddy of Scooby Doo, Lukas Lacko, the Slovak Shaggy, had Rafael Nadal on the the ropes.

Lacko (pronounced Lack-so by the announcers) is not exactly a young player.  At age 23, he’s been on the tour for a bit, but his ranking has never let him routinely get into the main draw.  Lacko has a relatively powerful forehand and backhand, his forehand, of course, being the more powerful weapon.  Nadal won a close first set in a tiebreak.

But then something happened that rarely happens to Nadal.  He lost a love set.  That’s right.  He was broken every single service game in the second set.  Part of it was Lacko’s aggression, hitting hard down-the-line shots when he could.  Part of it, especially near the end, was Nadal biding his time for the third set.  Down two breaks, Nadal felt his chances were better playing for the third set.

Statisticians say that Nadal has only lost about ten love sets, the last one to Andy Murray in Rotterdam in 2009.  In that match, Nadal had cramped up and so was unable to run down shots he normally does.

The commentators did point out that a player can win a set too easily.  One imagines that Nadal, though he rarely does it, let off the gas at the end of the match.  Much to the commentator’s prescience, Lacko immediately lost serve, then lost serve again.  Lacko did manage to hold serve then even break Nadal, but he couldn’t pull the feat off a second time to even up the match and eventually was broken once more, to lose the third set, 6-3.

Roger Federer struggled some against his long-time friend, Marco Chiudinelli.  He won 7-6, 7-5.  The first set was one of those sets where Federer was holding serve relatively easily, and yet Chiudinelli was also playing well, and Fed was having a hard time breaking. By the second set, Fed was actually down a break, before he returned the favor with interest, breaking back twice.

This is the second tough match that Fed has had.  In his opening round, he played Dutch player, Thomas Schoorel.  Schoorel is 21 years old and qualified into the main draw (as did Chiudinelli, Fed’s 2nd round opponent).  He had a big serve.  Federer needed a tiebreak to win the first set, then got a break in the second set.

Federer hit another tweener in this first round match.  The tweeners he’s most famous for (2009 semifinals against Djokovic and 2010 first round against Dabul) were both back facing the net.  This time, he was front facing the net.  It may be that Schoorel clipped the net causing the path of the ball to alter (some attributed it to Fed’s lazy footwork, but the net clipping seems more plausible).

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Up next for Nadal is the ever dangerous Ernests Gulbis.  Gulbis played quite well leading up to the French Open only to have an injury derail his French Open hopes.  Gulbis did not play that well the rest of the year.  However, as with everyone else, Gulbis has probably been training, and he starts the year looking fairly sharp.  He takes on Nadal, who Gulbis nearly beat back in Rome.

Nikolay Davydenko, defending champ at Doha, is still in the tournament.  He beat veteran Jarkko Nieminen, perhaps the best player to have come out of Finland.  Up next for Davydenko is Ivo Karlovic.  Karlovic spent most of 2010 injured.  He had some injury that didn’t seem to heal.  Karlovic has won his usual way.  Big serves and tiebreaks.  Karlovic has played 5 sets so far.  Not so surprisingly, every single set has been a tiebreak.  Karlovic beat Lukas Rosol in the first round in two tiebreaks and Philipp Kohlschreiber in three sets (all tiebreaks).  Davydenko is a pretty good returner, but Karlovic is a tough guy to play against.

Tsonga and Garcia-Lopez have had straight-forward runs through the draw and now face each other in the quarterfinals.  Federer will face his toughest opponent so far, Victor Troicki, who recently won his first tournament and clinched the Davis Cup for Serbia with his win over Michael Llodra in the fifth and deciding rubber.

In Chennai, defending champ Marin Cilic continues his woes.  After making the semifinal of the Australian Open nearly a year ago, Cilic has not been anywhere near a top ten player.  He lost to Kei Nishikori in the opening round.  Nishikoiri was making some progress to being a top 30 player when injury kept him out about half of 2009 and he spent most of 2010 playing Challengers trying to get his rank up high enough.  Nishikori faces Alejandro Falla in the second round, who pushed Federer to the brink of loss at Wimbledon this past year.

Speedster Bjorn Phau upset Richard Gasquet.  Phau faces Xavier Malisse next.  Top seed, Tomas Berdych might finally be regaining some form.  He had two easy wins.  It looks like Stan Wawrinka and Robin Haase of the Netherlands may meet each other (they both have to beat qualifiers to meet one another).  Haase pushed Nadal to 5 sets at Wimbledon.  People consider him highly talented, but injuries have prevented him from playing consistently well.

In Brisbane, the only tournament being held in Australia, Mardy Fish lost to Radek Stepanek. Stepanek is a tricky player who likes to come to net.  He was out much of last year due to injury and only came back late in the year.  He faces Florian Mayer who needed three sets to beat Richard Berankis of Lithuania, who might be one of the up and coming players of 2011.  Although a bit short, Berankis was once a top junior and beat Arnaud Clement in the first round.

Top seeded Robin Soderling had a fairly easy win over American Ryan Harrison in the first round and faces German Michael Berrer in the second round.  Andy Roddick, the second seed, will have a tough time against Marcos Baghdatis.  The one thing in Roddick’s favor is that Baghdatis has one of the lowest first serve percentages of top pros.  Roddick did have a fairly smooth win over Dolgopolov, who jumped up in the ranks last year, giving Nadal a scare in one of his matches.

Big serving Kevin Anderson, perhaps one of the tallest 3 men in pro tennis (Karlovic, Anderson, and Isner), is in the third round and will face Santiago Giraldo.  Giraldo is Colombian and the last time anyone probably saw him (in the US) was a Davis Cup match in Colombia where Fish won both his singles and the doubles match (they decided not to have the Bryan brothers play, for some reason) in a relegation match to get into the World level.

In the Hopman Cup, which is an exhibition, Britain is in trouble of not making the later rounds.  There are 8 teams playing in wo groups of 4.  It is round robin in each group of 4, so each player gets to play 6 matches minimum, three singles and three mixed.  Last year, Britain reached the finals and lost to Spain.  The basic M.O. was Andy Murray won his singles, Laura Robson lost hers, and the two won mixed doubles.  Robson has been dealing with a cold and has lacked energy, and the duo haven’t been winning their mixed doubles.  Andy Murray has been also trying to deal with the heat as Miami was not nearly as hot as Perth.

Serbia has won both its rounds as has the US.   Only the winners of each group advance to the finals, and it looks like it will be Serbia and the US.