DAY 2 of the Qatar Open saw the completion of the first round of 32 and the first matches of the following round, with first and fifth seeds, Stan Wawrinka and Laslo Djere running down their respective opposition.

Wawrinka continued his solid form, with the 15-ranked Swiss running out victor against Frenchman, Jeremy Chardy to head into Round 3. Chardy put up a real fight but to no avail, and was bundled out in straight sets on the wrong side of Wawrinka’s 12 aces, going down 6-3 6-4. Heading into the semi-finals alongside Wawrinka is Slovenian Aljaz Bedene who was challenged in the second set by Alexander Bublik before defeating him in a tiebreaker to end the set, winning 6-3 7-6 in a high quality contest.

Five individual nations came out on top in their first day of the tournament, with impressive wins from Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Kukushkin and Turkish wildcard, Cem Ilkel. Kukushkin delivered a straight sets win to march into the second round, dominating the first set against 229-ranked Tunisian wildcard, Malek Jaziri without dropping a single game before Jaziri found some form in the second. It was not enough, however, with Kukushkin getting the chocolates, 6-0 6-3. Ilkel impressed in the first set against 67-ranked Ricardis Berankis, sending a message to the Lithuanian with a 6-2 start to the match before dropping the second set. Ilkel responded well to Berankis’ second set performance, running away with an impressive 6-2 4-6 6-2 victory to proceed into the next round.

Two other matches went to three sets, with 47 and 51-ranked duo, Frances Tiafoe (USA) Lorenzo Sonego (Italy) sent packing. Both players won their respective second sets to have a chance to come out on top, but were unlucky as their respective opposition, fifth seed Serbian, Djere and Hungarian Marton Fucsovics, both ran out victors. Fellow Italian and wildcard, Marco Cecchinato put in the hard yards against his French opponent Pierre-Hugues Herbert but to no avail, going down in straight sets, 6-3 6-4.