Kei Nishikori, Rafael Nadal, Andy Murray advance at Rogers Cup

The 25-year-old just won Washington last week beating John Isner in a 3-set final, his third title of the year.

The Canadian opened the second set with a service break and held his own to tie the match. A lot of wind against a player who doesn’t want to play a lot of points from the baseline, so I tried to play the points shorter, going to the net, playing with the slice.

The fourth-seeded Nishikori posted his ATP-Tour leading 27th hard court win of the year in the second round match at Uniprix Stadium, the start of which was delayed nearly 90 minutes by rain.

Nishikori plays tonight against Belgian David Goffin.

Seventh-seeded Rafael Nadal, coming off a victory on clay at Hamburg two weeks ago, got his tournament started with a 7-6 (7-4), 6-3 victory over Sergiy Stakhovsky.

Goffin and Nishikori battle each other later this morning to earn the opportunity to face the 14-time Grand Slam victor. The coach understands that the dip is natural since Nadal has been “at the top of his game” for a long time.

Was a positive victory for me. “Six consecutive (match) victories, that didn’t happen very often during the season”.

After the proper arrangements made to dey up the land, Nadal jumped into the field and won the first set in a tiebreaker, sweeping the second to reach the third round and a date with Mikhail Youzhny, who beat French ninth seed Gilles Simon 6-1, 6-4.

Later, Andy Murray and Tommy Robredo will complete a match interrupted by rain Tuesday night.

The British number one will next face defending champion Jo Wilfred Tsonga on Saturday.

Next up for Murray is unseeded Gilles Muller of Luxembourg, who beat 15th seed Gael Monfils of France in a third-set tiebreak 6-3 3-6 7-6(4).

Qualifier Ernests Gulbis pulled off a 6-2 5-7 6-3 triumph over Lukas Rosol and will next face Berdych’s conqueror Young.