Nishikori, Thiem advance to Barcelona third round

Kei Nishikori battled into the third round of the Barcelona Open Banc Sabadell with a 6-1, 4-6, 6-3 victory over Roberto Bautista Agut on Tuesday afternoon. Nishikori broke serve a whopping seven times in 13 games before advancing in one hour and 57 minutes.

Nishikori-Bautista Agut highlights:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1_yboJp8uM]

Japan’s top player is joined in the last 16 by Dominic Thiem, who also needed three sets to get past Marcel Granollers 3-6, 6-3, 6-2. Thiem gave back a break advantage in the first set and lost it, but he controlled play the rest of the way. Granollers took a medical timeout for a leg injury trailing 4-1 in the third and never mounted a serious charge after that point.

It was a good day for Austrian tennis, as both Thiem and Jurgen Melzer earned wins:

It was also a good day for coach Gunther Bresnik, who got a nice birthday present–one day late–from each one of his two players in Thiem and Ernests Gulbis. Tuesday’s proceedings began with Gulbis scoring a 7-5, 7-6(1) victory over Daniel Gimeno-Traver. The ninth-seeded Latvian dropped serve twice, but he seized three breaks of his own even though Gimeno-Traver served at 66 percent and fired seven aces without double-faulting.

Philipp Kohlschreiber beats Edouard Roger-Vasselin, then watches Champions League soccer:

Tommy Robredo after his win over Marinko Matosevic:

Benoit Paire not happy after retiring against Andrey Golubev: