Shortly after both Rafael Nadal and Andy Roddick complained that the season was too long, Andy Roddick retired from his match, as did Juan Martin del Potro and Tommy Haas.

You can add two more names to that list: Gel Monfils retired after going down 6-2, 3-0 to Croat, Ivan Ljubicic.  Similarly, Stanislas Wawrinka also retired to Radek Stepanek, although the two got deep into a third set.  Stepanek was up 3-6, 7-6(5), 4-2.

The two top seeds are still cruising on.  Rafael Nadal beat Tommy Robredo 6-1, 6-4.  Robredo was up 2-0 with chances to hold and make it 3-0, but was unable to take advantage and lost serve.  This drained Robredo of motivation.  He tried the unusual tactic of playing angles with Nadal, a generally unwise strategy, hoping to use his fitness against Nadal, but that didn’t work out.

Meanwhile, number 2 seed, Novak Djokovic had an easy win over Rainer Schuettler 6-4, 6-2.  Djokovic seems to finally have found his stride, though it is tainted by the absence of two of the top 3 players in the world.  Even so, it’s good to see Djokovic regaining some form this late in the year.

Another player that has had a so-so 2009 is Gilles Simon (and to be fair, outside of the Slams, Djokovic has had a rock solid year).  Despite his relatively poor performances, Simon has clung to the top 10, though barely.  After a win in Bangkok, Simon seems rejuvenated playing on his favorite surface (hard courts/indoors).  He beat the guy that took out Safin and Cilic, Czech, Tomas Berdych.

Robin Soderling had an easy win over Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.  This match had a very peculiar point late in the first set.  At 30-all, Tsonga hit what he thought was a good pass up the line, on the line.  He failed to hear the call was out.  The announcers noted that if he had challenged, it would have been overruled.  When Tsonga won the next point, he thought he had won the game and was about to sit down.  The chair umpire told him that it was deuce, that 40-30 was called (on Soderling’s serve) and now it was deuce, not game.  Tsonga looked dejected.  He had failed to pay attention to a critical point in the match.  Soderling then cruised to a 6-3, 6-3 win.

Nikolay Davydenko showed his master of Fernando Gonzalez, beating him 6-3, 7-5.  Gonzalez has a poor record against Davydenko and tried to play steadier, mixing in slices with his usual topspin.  However, Davydenko played to the Gonzalez forehand, normally a dangerous strategy, but which opened up the court to attack his backhand.

Lopez also won his match over Melzer.

This event is heading to the interesting part where all the best players will begin to encounter one another.