By Lauren Lynch
Photo Credit: Tony Chang

(May 5, 2011) World No. 2 Novak Djokovic was the first winner of the day and played against Guillermo Garcia-Lopez 6-1, 6-2 in 51 minutes. He was soon followed by all of the seeded players at the Madrid ATP Masters. World No. 4 Andy Murray had no such luck losing to Brazilian Thomaz Bellucci 6-4, 6-2.

Not including his two Davis Cup wins, Djokovic is matched with Ivan Llendl for the record start-of-the-season winning streaks at 29-0. The clay does not seem to faze the hard court specialist, he won 100% of his first serves and 32 of 34 total service points while never facing a break point. Not to jump the gun but one has to wonder how well he will do on grass which has always been a struggle for him?

World No. 3 Roger Federer followed the seed wins with an easier defeat against Xavier Malisse at 6-4, 6-3, compared to his match yesterday. He will play Soderling next, for a rematch of the French Open quarterfinals last year. World No. 1 Rafael Nadal never had to get on court and got a day off after his opponent, Juan Martin Del Potro, retired with a hip injury.

We would have successfully been able to count to seven in the seeds and rankings today fight to get into the quarterfinals, however, World No.4 Andy Murray fell in two sets to Thomaz Bellucci making that an impossibility. Murray won only 43 of 113 total points and was unable to save or win any break points. Bellucci improved his career record on clay to 48 wins to 30 losses.

World No.5 Robin Soderling has had a dismal season on clay thus far but was able to pull out an epic win against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. The score was 7-6(8), 7-5. World No. 22 Tsonga suffered an ankle roll in the first set but continued to fight and shot thirteen aces. Soderling improved his record against the Frenchman to 5-0.

The last match of the day was between World No. 6 David Ferrer versus Sergiy Stakhovsky. Stakhovsky gave Ferrer a harder time than the score indicates but Ferrer won 6-3, 7-6(3). Stakhovsky hit five aces and zero double faults while Ferrer had two aces and two faults. Ferrer was consistent on his first first at 87% won.

World No. 7 Tomas Berdych won his way into the quarterfinals defeating Juan Monaco of Argentina 7-5, 6-3. This is only Berdych's second clay court tournament thus far which he skipped over last year to get into the French Open semifinals. Berdych will play Bellucci next. Bellucci has only beaten Berdych once on clay and that was in 2008.

The only match not featured seeds was between Daniel Gimeno-Traver and Michael Llodra. Llodra won after losing the first set 1-6 to come back 6-4, 7-6(4) in the last two sets in the longest match of the day (two hours and seventeen minutes). Llodra will face clay-master Nadal.