Soderling through to Barcelona third round

BARCELONA, Spain, April 20 (UPI) -- Second-seeded Robin Soderling took a tight second-round victory Tuesday at the $2.1 million Barcelona Open tennis tournament in Spain.

Soderling got past Juan Ignacio Chela 7-5, 7-5 by winning 74 percent of the points off his first serve. He also had four service breaks -- two in each set -- to more than offset the two that Chela managed against him.

The tournament lost four seeds Tuesday, however, with the biggest blow coming when top-seeded and defending champion Rafael Nadal withdrew, citing exhaustion. Also, ninth-seeded Tommy Robredo retired from a match with a back issue and 10th-seeded Juan Monaco and No. 14-seeded Albert Montanes were beaten.

Robredo trailed Simone Bolelli 6-7 (7-9), 6-4, 3-1 when he was forced to quit. Monaco fell 6-2, 3-6, 6-2 to Daniel Gimeno-Traver and Montanes was beaten 6-3, 7-6 (7-1) by Jeremy Chardy. Those were all first-round matches.

In addition to Soderling, 15th-seeded Nicolas Almagro beat Simon Greul 6-1, 6-3 and Ivan Navarro stopped Pablo Cuevas 6-2, 6-4 in second-round matches.

No. 11-seeded Jurgen Melzer defeated Nicolas Lapentti 6-3, 6-3; No. 12 Lleyton Hewitt got past Marsel Ilhan 6-4, 4-6, 6-2; and 16th-seeded Feliciano Lopez was ahead 6-3, 3-0 when Oleksandr Dolgopolov Jr. withdrew because of illness in first-round matches.

Other first-round winners Tuesday were Victor Hanescu, Alberto Martin, Ernests Gulbis, Sergiy Stakhovsky and Denis Istomin.