Shanghai: Top seed Rafa Nadal marched into the last 16 of the Shanghai Masters with a thoroughly entertaining 6-2, 6-7, 6-4 victory over American James Blake on Wednesday.
US Open champion Juan Martin Del Potro, however, joined the growing casualty list at the $3.24-million tournament, retiring because of a wrist injury while 7-5, 2-1 down to Austrian Jurgen Melzer.
World No. 2 Nadal beat Blake in three sets on his way to the semi-finals in Beijing last week and on Wednesday needed more than two hours to get past the man he rates as having one of the best returns in the game.
After Nadal raced away with the first set, the pair contested two absorbing sets filled with high-quality winners before Nadal, with Blake serving to take the match into a decisive tiebreak, unleashed a sizzling forehand to clinch victory.
"It's been a difficult year for me, so every victory is really important for me," said the Spaniard. "I thought I deserved to win the match because most of the time I think I played better than James."
Nadal has not reached a final since the Madrid Masters in May and will continue his comeback from knee and abdominal injuries against compatriot Tommy Robredo on Thursday.
"If I continue like this, with this motivation...I'm going to come back to playing my best tennis," he added.
Third seed Del Potro followed American fourth seed Andy Roddick in departing the tournament early through injury.
"I had this injury in Miami this year and I don't want to risk for the end of the season," said the 21-year-old Argentine.
"I'm a little sorry. It's a big tournament here in Shanghai, very important for me, but if I want to have a good finish this season, I have to recover."
Season's length
With world No.1 Roger Federer and No. 3 Andy Murray skipping the tournament because of fatigue and a wrist injury respectively, Del Potro's departure is certain to intensify the debate over the length of the men's season.
"It's difficult to play 11 months at a high level but we know they are working on that, so we hope that there will be a good change for the future," said the world No. 5.
In-form second seed Novak Djokovic picked up where he left off in the final of the China Open on Sunday, notching up his 15th win in his last 17 matches with a straightforward 6-3, 6-1 victory over Italian qualifier Fabio Fognini.
The Serbian, who won the final Masters Cup title here last year, has lost only to Federer in his last three tournaments, in the Cincinnati Masters final and the US Open semi-finals.
Fifth seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga of France took exactly an hour to dismiss Chinese wild card Zeng Shaoxuan 6-3, 6-3 and set up a third-round clash with Swedish ninth seed Robin Soderling.
Croatian Ivan Ljubicic proved it was possible to play at the top level after 30, despite the grueling schedule, by upsetting Spanish seventh seed Fernando Verdasco 6-4, 7-6.
Eighth seed Gilles Simon and Gael Monfils, the 11th seed, ensured France would have three players in the third round when they beat Viktor Troicki and Lleyton Hewitt respectively.
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