San Diego Open: Top-seeded Andrey Rublev overpowers Brandon Nakashima

San Diego: Top-seeded Andrey Rublev broke to begin each set and was on his way to overpowering wild-card entry Brandon Nakashima 6-2, 6-1 in the second round of the San Diego Open on Wednesday.

Rublev, fresh off helping Team Europe win the Laver Cup exhibition in Boston , used big forehands to take control of points from the baseline.

“Since the beginning, I was thinking I need to be the one who’s going to dominate. I need to try to take my forehand and try to dictate,” said Rublev, a 23-year-old Russian who is ranked No 5 and has been to four Grand Slam quarterfinals.

Rublev improved to 45-15 in 2021. He had a first-round bye at the hard-court tournament that was a late addition to the ATP calendar to make up for the cancellation of the tour’s Asian swing because of the coronavirus pandemic.

This was the first match against a Top 20 opponent for Nakashima, a 20-year-old from San Diego who is ranked 83rd.

Next up for Rublev is a match against No 6 seed Diego Schwartzman who beat Lloyd Harris.

No 5 Hubert Hurkacz and No 8 Dan Evans were seeded winners earlier in the day.

Hurkacz, who won singles and doubles titles at Metz, France, last week, defeated qualifier Alex Bolt 7-6 (2), 6-1, and Evans beat two-time Grand Slam finalist Kevin Anderson 7-6 (11), 7-5.

In Evans’ victory, 22 points in a row were won by the server from 3-all to 6-all in the opening set. Then, in the tiebreaker, it was Anderson who nosed ahead and held set points at 6-5 and 7-6 but failed to convert.

Anderson, the runner-up to Rafael Nadal at the US Open in 2017 and to Novak Djokovic at Wimbledon in 2018, got a third chance to close out the set when ahead 11-10 but again came up short. Eventually, Evans took it on his fourth set point.

“A little fortunate to come through that one,” Evans said.

Evans, who is ranked a career-high 22nd, now faces 28th-ranked Cam Norrie in an all-British matchup.

“I know him pretty well; he knows me,” said Evans, who figured there will be chatter about the upcoming meeting on a text messaging group both he and Norrie are part of.

They’ve played each other once before on tour: Norrie beat Evans in four sets in the first round at the Australian Open in February.