Nikolay Davydenko and David Ferrer moved smartly into the third round of the Hamburg Masters.

Davydenko, the Russian fourth seed, helped himself to a 6-4 6-1 victory over Croatia's Ivan Ljubicic, while Spain's Ferrer, seeded fifth, was equally impressive in a 6-3 6-3 win over Ivo Minar of the Czech Republic.

In the outstanding performance on centre-court, Davydenko took advantage of a stream of unforced errors from Ljubicic to seal an easy win in one hour 24 minutes.

The world number four has one Masters Series title to his name already this season after beating Nadal in the final on a hard court in Miami, and he has made a decent start to the clay-court season.

"Playing in Miami was much easier for me than playing on clay but maybe winning that tournament has helped mentally," Davydenko said.

"My tennis is still the same but when you feel good you try to make more winners."

In another second-round match, Spain's Fernando Verdasco had an even easier win as he saw off Frenchman Michael Llodra 6-2 6-0.

Two first-round matches were cut short by injury in what has become a familiar story over the last few weeks in Europe.

Luis Horna of Peru and Kristof Vliegen of Belgium were the latest players forced to pull out, gifting victories to Italian Potito Starace and Jose Acasuso of Argentina respectively.

At last week's Masters in Rome both semi-finals were decided by retirements through injury.

Rafael Nadal has led players' complaints about this year's calendar, which has had three clay-court Masters Series events, plus Barcelona, crammed into four weeks.

"Maybe it's the ATP we have to thank for giving us a calendar like this," Nadal answered when asked about the run of retirements.

Top seeds Roger Federer and Nadal are not in action until Wednesday.

Reuters