Del Potro Looks Impressive In First Round

4 months ago 24th Jun 11:21

Fifth seed Juan Martin Del Potro laid down an early indication as to his intentions for the Wimbledon tournament as he blasted through his opening match against France's Arnaud Clement 6-3 6-1 6-2.

The Argentine player is riding on a wave of success after his semi-final run at the French Open a couple of weeks ago, a semi-final against Federer that he should have won, as he provided on of the most awesome performances of day two.

The twenty year old had not played on the grass since the tournament last year, where he went out in the second round, but that wasn't evident as he powered through his match in just ninety seven minutes.

Replacing Rafael Nadal at the top of the draw Del Potro could face Britain's Andy Murray in the semi-final next week, should they both make it, but first Del Potro will have to get past Lleyton Hewitt who has found some good form in recent weeks.

Big hitting American Andy Roddick wasn't as impressive in his opening match against Jeremy Chardy as he dropped a set.

In the opening set he raced to a 5-0 lead in just over ten minutes and it looked like it was going to be a straight forward win for the American.

But Chardy fought back to get some games on the board before Roddick finally took the opening set 6-3.

The second set was a much closer affair as Chardy battled back. And despite losing the second set the Frenchman took the third. But Roddick regained his composure to wrap it up in four winning 6-3 7-6 4-6 6-3.

There was a shock loss for the 14th seed Marat Safin, a semi-finalist last year, to qualifier Jesse Levine 6-2 3-6 7-6 6-4.

But there were good wins for French Open semi-finalist Fernando Gonzalez and Tommy Haas, who is continuing his good run on grass after winning the Halle tournament just last week.

David Ferrer Tomas Berdych, Radek Stepanek and Nikolay Davydenko all progress into the second round.