Federer makes serene progress in Halle

Top seeds Roger Federer and Nikolay Davydenko made serene progress into the second round of the Gerry Weber Open in Germany.

World number two Federer, who has won the tournament on his last five appearances dating back to 2003, extended his unbeaten record at Halle to 26 matches with a 6-4 6-4 success against Finn Jarkko Nieminen in just over an hour.

One break in each set was enough for the Swiss to wrap up a routine win in which he was on target with 75% of first serves.

Second seed Davydenko was initially made to work hard by home player Simon Greul, who pushed him to a first-set tie-break.

The Russian, though, cruised through the breaker 7/1 and then reeled off the second set to love.

But third seed Mikhail Youzhny crashed out to home wildcard Nicolas Kiefer in three sets.

It looked like business as usual when the Russian won the first set but Kiefer, who as world number 181 was conceding 167 places in the rankings to his opponent, roared back to win 4-6 6-1 7-5.

There was further German success in the day's remaining matches, though Philipp Kohlschreiber had to battle for almost two and a half hours to overcome Belgian Ruben Bemelmans.

Kohlschreiber won the first set on a tie-break but lost a gruelling breaker in the second before recovering to complete a 7-6 (7/2) 6-7 (10/12) 6-4 win.

Wildcard Andreas Beck beat Ukrainian Sergiy Stakhovsky 6-1 7-5, Mischa Zverev eased past France's Florent Serra 6-4 6-4 and Switzerland's Marco Chiudinelli beat Belgium's Olivier Rochus 6-3 2-6 6-3.