SHANGHAI, China -- A day after narrowly escaping his second first-round exit in as many weeks, American Andy Roddick regained his form at the 2011 Shanghai Rolex Masters with a straight-set victory over Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov, 7-6 (7-3), 7-5.
With the match tied at four games apiece in the first set, Roddick and Dimitrov exchanged breaks to pull even at 5-5, before holding serve to send the set to a tie breaker, where Roddick won the final four points to take the set.
After falling behind 0-2 in the second set, Roddick eventually pulled even at 4-4, breaking Dimitrov's serve in the eighth game, but gave the following game right back to the Bulgarian. Roddick then went on to break Dimitrov's serve two more times, taking the set and match.
"Play well, not play well, you get the same opportunity: you get to play again," offered Roddick, who will face seventh-seeded Nicolas Almagro of Spain in the third round. "There's no such thing as a bad win. I'll keep going in this tournament hopefully."
While Roddick advances to the round of 16, his fellow American, fifth-seeded Mardy Fish (pictured below), became the first top-ten player to be ousted in Shanghai, a casualty of up-and-coming Australian Bernard Tomic.
Down one-set-to-none, Tomic, 19, put together an impressive performance against the more-experienced Fish, coming back to win the final two sets and earn the win, 4-6, 6-1, 6-4, avenging his loss to the American just five days earlier in Japan.
"He had his chance last week where he beat me and I thought I was going to get beaten again this week. Luckily I turned it around," explained Tomic. "It was a matter of who broke who in that third set."
In addition to Roddick and Fish, three other Americans took the court at the Shanghai Rolex Masters; Alex Bogomolov Jr. defeated Spain's Marcel Granollers, 6-2, 6-3, and Ryan Harrison (pictured below) bested Serbian Viktor Troicki, 6-3, 6-4, while Donald Young fell to Switzerland's Stanislas Wawrinka, 7-6 (7-5), 6-7 (7-2), 2-6.
Bogomolov Jr. advances to face Spain's Feliciano Lopez, while Harrison will square off against Australia's Matthew Ebden.
Results from 2011 Shanghai Rolex Masters, October 11, 2011
Kei Nishikori (Japan) def. Robin Haase (Netherlands) 0-6, 7-5, 7-6 (7-5)
Dmitry Tursunov (Russia) def. Thomaz Bellucci (Brazil) 6-7 (5-7), 6-4, 7-5
Feliciano Lopez (Spain) def. Janko Tipsarevic (Serbia) 7-6 (7-2), 7-6 (7-3)
Jurgen Melzer (Austria) def. Ivan Ljubicic (Croatia) 6-4, 6-2
Radek Stepanek (Czech Republic) def. Zhang Ze (China) 6-3, 6-3
Alexandr Dolgopolov (Ukraine) def. Lukasz Kubot (Poland) 6-4, 7-6 (7-6)
Florian Mayer (Germany) def. David Nalbandian (Argentina) 6-3, 6-4
Albert Ramos (Spain) def. Marin Cilic (Croatia) 6-3, 6-4
Nicolas Almagro (Spain) def. Tommy Robredo (Spain) 7-5, 6-3
Milos Raonic (Canada) def. Michael Llodra (France) 6-7 (2-7), 6-2, 7-6 (7-6)
Gilles Simon (France) def. Albert Montanes (Spain) 6-1, 6-1