World No. 1 tennis player Roger Federer of Switzerland has won his 23rd consecutive match of 2005 with a straight sets victory at the Monte Carlo Masters tournament in Monaco.
The top-seeded Federer opened his clay-court season Tuesday with an easy 6-3, 6-1 win over Greg Rusedski of Britain. Second-seeded Marat Safin of Russia also advanced, beating Lee Hyung-Taik of South Korea, 6-0, 7-5, in a match completed after a rain delay on Monday.
Other seeds advancing Tuesday included No. 9 Guillermo Canas of Argentina, 10th-seeded Nikolay Davydenko of Russia and 13th-seeded Mario Ancic of Croatia.
But there were numerous upsets as well. Mariano Zabaleta of Argentina shocked third-seeded Tim Henman of Britain, 6-4, 4-6, 6-2, while No. 5 Carlos Moya of Spain was eliminated, 7-6, 1-6, 6-3, by Mariano Puerto of Argentina. Also falling were No. 8 Ivan Ljubicic of Croatia, 12th-seeded Thomas Johansson of Sweden and number-14 Dominik Hrbaty of Slovakia.
Unseeded players moving into the second round included Albert Costa, David Ferrer, Alberto Martin and Albert Mantanes of Spain, Frenchmen Fabrice Santoro and Jean-Rene Lisnard, Filippo Volandri and Andreas Seppi of Italy, Florian Mayer of Germany, Czech player Tomas Berdych, Fernando Gonzalez of Chile and Olivier Rochus of Belgium.
Women's Play: Top Seeds Advance in Family Circle Cup
All three of the seeded players in action early Tuesday have advanced to the second round of the Family Circle Cup tennis tournament in Charleston, South Carolina.
No. 13 Tatiana Golovin of France and her 15th-seeded countrywoman Mary Pierce both won in straight sets, while 14th-seeded Shinobu Asagoe of Japan had to rally from a first-set loss to advance to the second round.
Golovin defeated American Amy Frazier, 6-3, 6-3, while Pierce beat another American, Mashona Washington, 6-3, 6-2. Asagoe bounced back from a tiebreaker loss in the first set to top Lindsay Lee-Waters of the United States, 6-7, 6-0, 6-2.
In matches with unseeded players, American Lisa Raymond defeated Virginie Razzano of France, 6-3, 6-0. Katarina Srebotnik of Slovakia eliminated Australia's Nicole Pratt, 7-5, 6-1, and Samantha Stosur of Australia beat Virginia Ruano Pascual, 6-2, 6-3.
Some information for this report provided by AP and AFP.