AFP, Miami, Mar 26: Fourth seed Robin Soderling staged a fightback to start his campaign at the ATP-WTA Miami Masters Friday, with the Swede earning a 3-6, 6-2, 6-4 victory over Croatian Ivan Dodig to reach the third round.
Two-time Roland Garros finalist Soderling was playing for the first time in almost two weeks since losing his first match at Indian Wells after trying to play with an ankle problem and after five days in bed with a virus.
'The first round is always very difficult,' said the relieved Scandinavian. 'Obviously I didn't play my best tennis today, but I'm still very happy that I won.
'I know I can wake up tomorrow feeling great.'
With three titles already this season, the Indian Wells loss was a blip on the Soderling record in 2011, where he has now won a leading 20 matches on the ATP.
Soderling is also working to at least duplicate his Miami semi-final from 2010 as he handed the 57th-ranked Dodig his third career loss against no wins versus Top five players.
'At Indian Wells I didn't play the way I wanted to, but I had some problems when I got there. I was in bed with fever and I didn't have too many days to prepare.'
The Swede next plays the winner from German Philipp Kohlschreiber and Argentine Juan Del Potro. 'I lost to Kohlschreiber last week, and Del Potro I haven't played for a while.
'It's gonna be a good match, it's going to be very difficult for me.'
Two more seeds joined Soderling with wins, as number 14 Mardy Fish beat Frenchman Julien Benneteau 6-4, 6-3 and Serb 16th seed Viktor Troicki stopped Marsel Ilhan of Turkey 6-3, 6-3.
India's Somdev Devvarman attacked the uncharacteristically low-voltage game of Canadian Milos Raonic, beating this year's ATP revelation 7-6 (7/5), 7-5.
'I was trying to overcome a lot of things, I wasn't playing my best, I wasn't feeling the ball. I was trying to just squeeze by,' said Raonic. 'I wanted to win today and use tomorrow to get better and play better on Sunday. But that didn't happen.
'He played well. It was not the greatest match but I was there fighting as much as I could today.'
On the women's side, second seed Kim Clijsters took to the court after a shoulder injury which forced her to quit her last match in the fourth round of Indian Wells, starting in Miami with a 6-1, 6-1 thrashing of Anastasia Yakimova.
Polish ninth seed Agnieszka Radwanska beat Czech Barbora Zahlavova Strycova 6-1, 6-0 and Czech 12th seed Petra Kvitova put out the last American standing in Varvara Lepchenko 6-1, 6-2.