Ivan Ljubicic dispatches Karol Beck
ZAGREB, Croatia -- Top-seeded Ivan Ljubicic of Croatia beat Slovakia's Karol Beck 7-6 (5), 3-6, 6-3 on Monday to advance to the second round of the Zagreb Indoors tournament.
Ljubicic, the 2006 champion and a finalist in 2007 and 2008, made the decisive break in the eighth game of the third set. He didn't drop another point after that.
Complete results
Need the scores from any match played in today's tournaments? Results
"It was a tough one, but it is important that I won and not how I did it," said Ljubicic, who added it was his first match in three months.
Fifth-seeded Andreas Seppi from Italy also advanced by beating Germany's Daniel Brands 6-4, 7-6 (1). Seventh-seeded Robin Haase needed only 57 minutes to earn his first victory of the season, defeating Croatian wild card entry Kristijan Mesaros 6-2, 6-3.
Haase won 81 percent of his first-serve points against the 23-year-old Mesaros, who was playing in his first ATP tournament.
Germany's Matthias Bachinger defeated Izak Van der Merwe of South Africa, 6-3, 6-3, and Lukas Lacko of Slovakia beat Italy's Potito Starace 7-6 (2), 6-7 (4), 6-3.
Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press