After struggling initially with Philipp Kohlschreiber in the first round, Rafael Nadal found things considerably easier with Denis Gremelmayr in the second round.  Gremelmayr had to hit winners from all over the place just to hold what few serves he had, but he couldn’t do it enough to bother Nadal as Nadal tightened up his game.  Nadal has already said that he didn’t have as much practiced as he would have liked due to an injury, and is basically playing because the Australian Open is coming up.  He’ll fight through a shoulder injury, then take more rest after the Australian Open.  Shorter matches will help the Spaniard.

Final score: 62 62.

Up next for the Mallorcan is Russian, Mikhail Youzhny, who needed three sets to beat big-serving Ivo Karlovic, who played sparingly last year, due to an injury.

Meanwhile, Roger Federer cruised to another routine win over Grega Zmelja, a Slovenian ranked outside the top 100, who qualified into the main draw.  The score: 62, 63.

Gael Monfils needed three sets to beat the veteran, Benjamin Becker, 75 46 75.

Doha has the strongest field with Gael Monfils, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, and Viktor Troicki still in the tournament.  Still, it’s expected that Nadal and Federer will make it to the finals.

In Brisbane, Murray had to play veteran Gilles Muller, a big hitting left-hander.  Again, Murray struggled in the first set before taking a second set tiebreak and rolling in the third set.  Score: 46 76 60.  Murray’s job gets no easier as he plays Marcos Baghdatis who beat Ryan Harrison in the first round.  Baghdatis has a winning record over Murray although his first two wins were in the years before 2008, Murray’s break through year, and his other win was early last year in Rotterdam when Murray was in an emotional funk.  Even though Baghdatis is a very good player, this is the kind of person Murray needs to have a good solid win.  Ideally, Murray would raise the level of his game and thump him, but the question is whether he can.  He’s started off a bit cool in the first two rounds.

Tomic, Stepanek, Simon, Dolgopolov, and Giraldo move along as well.  Earlier in the week, Laver called on Tomic to work harder to get higher in the rankings.  There is some sense that the Aussie hopeful might be taking things a bit too casually and easy, which isn’t the kind of work ethic that typifies Australian athletes.

In Chennai, Wawrinka needed three sets to beat Frenchman Roger-Vasselin who is a lucky loser.  Tipsarevic has yet to play his first match.  Milos Raonic beat Victor Hanescu to reach the third round.  Hanescu had beaten Querrey in the opening round.  Raonic next plays Dudi Sela.  The two were scheduled to play in Davis Cup last year, but Raonic got injured and was unable to replay the reverse singles which pairs both sides number 1 against each other.

Several Asians are in this draw including Sugita and Soeda of Japan and Yen-Hsun Lu of Taiwan.

Stan Wawrinka is defending champ at Chennai.