Fourth seed Rafael Nadal was given a scare by Argentinian David Nalbandian before edging into the fourth round of the Sony Ericsson Open in Miami.
Nadal dropped the first set on a tie-break against the former Wimbledon finalist, who has missed much of the last year due to injury.
But Nadal turned up his level of play, as he needed to, and eventually won 6-7 (10/8) 6-2 6-2 against the wild-card entrant to set up a clash against either his fellow Spaniard David Ferrer or Croatian Ivo Karlovic.
Spain's Nicolas Almagro was another early winner today, beating Frenchman Jeremy Chardy 6-2 6-7 (11/9) 6-3, while Brazilian 27th seed Thomaz Bellucci defeated Belgian Olivier Rochus 6-3 6-
4.
The tournament has already lost several of its big names early on, with Rochus having claimed the scalp of Novak Djokovic, while Andy Murray tumbled out to American Mardy Fish.
In the Women’s event US Open champion Kim Clijsters demolished Shahar Peer for the loss of only one game to stroll into the fourth round.
Belgian Clijsters, who could face fourth seed Victoria Azarenka of Belarus in her next match, overwhelmed Israeli player Peer 6-0 6-1.
Despite Clijsters being the 14th seed and Peer the 17th seed, the gulf in quality was shown in the scoreline and the match statistics.
Peer did not have a single chance to break the Clijsters serve, while her opponent had 10 chances, of which she took five, and the match was over inside 51 minutes.
Another early winner was Australian Sam Stosur, the ninth seed, who was made to work hard for her victory by France's Virginie Razzano.
Razzano won the first set of their contest but Stosur stormed back to take the match 4-6 7-5 6-1.
