French Open: Top seeds advance to third round

Paris, May 31 (IANS) Top seeds Rafael Nadal, Andy Murray and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga advanced to the third round with comfortable wins over their opponents at the French Open here Thursday.

Nadal, looking for his seventh French Open title, had the easiest outing of the day, routing Uzbekistan's Denis Istomin 6-2, 6-2, 6-0.

Second seeded Nadal, aiming to win his 11th Slam, will next play the winner of the match between Florian Mayer and Eduardo Schwank.

The fourth-seeded Murray came back from a set down to beat Finland's Jarkko Nieminen 1-6, 6-4, 6-1, 6-2.

Murray, who reached the semifinals at Roland Garros last year, is bidding to become the first Briton since Fred Perry in 1936 to win a Grand Slam tournament. He has already lost in three major finals.

To help him get there, Murray hired Ivan Lendl as coach at the start of this season. Lendl lost his first four Grand Slam finals before winning the French Open in 1984.

"We worked on many, many things. There's not been one radical change," Murray said. "If you pick sort of 10 small things to work on and change, that can maybe turn into a big difference."

Fifth seeded Frenchman Tsonga lost the second set but regained hios composure to beat German Cedrik-Marcel Stebe 6-2, 4-6, 6-2, 6-1. Tsonga will play Italy's Fabio Fognini, who in a marathon five setter beat 28th seed Viktor Troicki.

Claycourt specialist David Ferrer, a quarter-finalist twice here and the sixth seed, eased past unseeded Frenchman Benoit Paire 6-3, 6-3, 6-2.