Mayer among first-round Sydney winners

SYDNEY, Jan. 7 (UPI) -- Fifth-seeded Florian Mayer cruised into the second round of the Apia International tennis tournament in Sydney.

Mayer's 6-1, 6-2 rout of Joao Sousa took just 50 minutes. Even with Sousa getting two break-point chances Mayer dropped just seven points on serve. His 33-of-40 success rate serving converts to 82 percent.

He also had a pair of breaks in each set, winning more than half of the points when Sousa served.

No. 8-seeded Marcel Granollers took more than an hour and a half longer to finish off his first-round win, eventually getting by Matthew Ebden 5-7, 7-5, 6-1. Granollers had seven double faults and was good on just half of his first serves but settled his game in the third set when he won 61 percent of the points on serve and 60 percent off Ebden's serve.

Also in the first round, Julien Benneteau, last year's Sydney runner-up, beat Pablo Andujar 6-3, 5-7, 6-2 and Denis Istomin fought off all but one of the 10 break points he faced in a 6-7 (4-7), 6-4, 7-6 (7-3) win over James Duckworth.