Rafael Nadal won’t give up his Monte Carlo Masters title without a fight. The 19-year-old Spaniard beat Arnaud Clement of France 6-4, 6-4 in the first round on Tuesday and said he wasn’t aggressive enough.
”The worst thing is to play too defensively,” Nadal said. ”I need to play with more intensity and be aggressive. If I do that, I’m going to do well because my touch is good.”
Also hitting well were 2004 champ Guillermo Coria and Ivan Ljubicic. However, former number ones Carlos Moya and Marat Safin and fifth-seeded Nikolay Davydenko bowed out.
Nadal lost his serve twice but broke Clement four times to win his 37th successive match on clay, and first of the year.
”This is my first match [on clay] for a long time, so it is important to begin with a victory,” said second-ranked Nadal. ”But I didn’t play very well — I was a little nervous.”
By this time last year, Nadal had won two of his 11 titles. This year he didn’t defend either in South America because of the left ankle injury that gave him a delayed start to the season.
While he’s the only man to have beaten Roger Federer this year — en route to the Dubai title — Nadal has also lost three times. One of them, to Clement in February at Marseille, he avenged on Tuesday.
Next up for Nadal will be Monaco wild card Jean-Rene Lisnard, who earned his first win on the main ATP tour this year by beating Britain’s Andrew Murray 4-6, 7-6 (5), 7-5 in a three-hour thriller.
Coria, seeded sixth, started his run at a fourth straight Monaco final by dispatching Mikhail Youzhny 6-3, 6-1. The Argentine improved to 21-4 in Monaco.
Youzhny was one of five Russians to exit on Tuesday, including Davydenko and Safin.
Safin, a semifinalist at Valencia last week, lost to Paul-Henri Mathieu of France 6-0, 7-5.
”It was little bit too late to come back in the second set,” Safin said. He added he took medicine on Monday night that left him feeling drowsy. ”I was ill the last two days. I was still a bit weak,” he said. ”I wasn’t ready for this.”
Fifth-seeded Davydenko lost to big-serving Robin Soderling of Sweden 6-3, 2-6, 6-4, and 1998 champ Moya was bundled out by Fernando Gonzalez of Chile 6-3, 3-6, 6-1.
Ljubicic, seeded fourth, added to the Russians’ bad day by beating Igor Andreev 6-3, 4-6, 6-2, and will play Florent Serra, one of four Frenchman to advance on Tuesday after beating Thailand’s Paradorn Srichaphan 6-1, 7-5.
Other seeded winners included number eight David Ferrer of Spain, number 13 Sebastien Grosjean of France, and number 16 Tomas Berdych of the Czech Republic.
Ferrer won 6-0, 4-6, 6-2 over Nicolas Massu of Chile; Grosjean defeated Fernando Verdasco of Spain 7-6 (6), 6-3; and Berdych beat Fabrice Santoro of France 6-2, 6-4.
Also winners were Potito Starace of Italy; Gilles Simon of France, the Valencia runner-up last Sunday; qualifier Benjamin Balleret of Monaco following in his father’s footsteps; Feliciano Lopez of Spain; and Dominik Hrbaty of Slovakia. — Sapa-AP