Barcelona, Spain (SportsNetwork.com) - Spanish crowd favorite Albert Montanes advanced, while Czech veteran Radek Stepanek came up a first-round loser Monday at the $2.55 million Barcelona Open tennis event.
Montanes got past qualifier and fellow Spaniard Marc Lopez 7-6 (7-4), 6-2, while rising Austrian Dominic Thiem, a qualifier this week, doused the 35- year-old Stepanek 6-4, 6-4 on the red clay at Royal Barcelona Tennis Club.
In other action involving Spaniards, Roberto Bautista Agut drubbed Pole Lukasz Kubot 6-1, 6-0; Russian qualifier Andrey Kuznetsov took out wild card Pablo Carreno Busta 2-6, 6-1, 6-2; wild card Daniel Gimeno-Traver bested fellow countryman Roberto Carballes Baena 6-3, 7-5; and wild card Inigo Cervantes overcame Ukrainian Aleksandr Nedovyesov 3-6, 6-2, 6-4.
Additional Day 1 wins came for Frenchmen Edouard Roger-Vasselin and Kenny De Schepper, Colombian Santiago Giraldo, Aussie Marinko Matosevic, Kazakhstan's Andrey Golubev, and Russian Teymuraz Gabashvili, who is rewarded with a second-round match against second-seeded Spanish star and four-time Barcelona runner-up to Rafael Nadal, David Ferrer.
The top seed here is the Spanish superstar Nadal, the three-time reigning and eight-time overall Barcelona king. He beat Nicolas Almagro in last year's all-Spanish finale here.
This week's winner will earn $580,000.
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