Tsonga cruises into second round of Shanghai Masters

Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga reached the second round of Shanghai Masters on Monday after breezing past Germany’s Florian Mayer 6-3, 6-2. World Number 13 Tsonga is making his first court appearance following a one-month absence due to knee injury.

Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in action against Florian Mayer at Shanghai Masters. Aly Song/Reuters

The other first-round winners on Monday included Viktor Troicki, Benoît Paire, Alexander Zverev and Steve Johnson. The top four seeds Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray, Stan Wawrinka and Rafael Nadal got first round byes.

Murray would be aiming to emulate his weekend performance at the China Open where he beat unseeded Grigor Dimitrov 6-4, 7-6 in the final to claim his fifth title of the year. The win also enabled the world Number 2 to close the ranking points gap to Djokovic.

Djokovic opted out of the Beijing tournament because of elbow injury.

In other tennis action in China, Russian two-time Grand Slam champion and second-seed Svetlana Kuznetsova cruised past France's Pauline Parmentier 6-1, 6-3 at the WTA Tianjin Open.

Home favourite and world no. 125 Wang Yafan provided the biggest surprise of the day as she beat sixth-seed Yulia Putintseva 3-6, 6-3, 6-4.

The other Chinese players fared less well.

Zhang Kai-Lin lost 3-6, 7-5, 6-3 to Croatia's Donna Vekic, while Tianjin native Duan Ying-Ying was defeated 6-4, 6-3 by Montenegrin Danka Kovinic.

2010 Wimbledon doubles champion Vania King of the US was knocked out by Chang Kai-Chen of Taiwan.