ATP World Tour No. 14 Gael Monfils maintained his good run of form with a 6-2, 6-2 victory over French compatriot Paul-Henri Mathieu Tuesday in the first round of the Shanghai ATP Masters 1000 Presented by Rolex, the penultimate ATP World Tour Masters 1000 tournament of the season.

The 23 year old, who had defeated Mathieu in both their previous meetings, has won 10 of his past 12 matches. The right-hander snapped a four-year title drought with victory over Philipp Kohlschreiber at the Open de Moselle three weeks ago, before reaching the quarter-finals at the Proton Malaysian Open, Kuala Lumpur 2009 and the semi-finals at the Rakuten Japan Open Tennis Championships in the past two weeks.

Monfils next will face former two-time ATP World Tour Champion Lleyton Hewitt, who used to work with Monfils’ current coach, Roger Rasheed. The two have met twice before and have split their meetings 1-1; this will be their first clash on hard court.

Hewitt advanced in the first match of the day with a 6-2, 6-4 victory over American John Isner. The Australian, who captured Tennis Masters Cup Shanghai in 2002, created 10 break point chances against Isner’s famed serve and was able to convert three as he prevailed in the pair’s first meeting after 76 minutes.

"I knew it was going to be a tough match," said Hewitt. "I knew I was going to have to try and get a lot of balls back. If they (big servers) are serving well, it's obviously tough to get into games against them. But it's a matter of just taking your chances when you get into it against those guys, and I did that exceptionally well today, especially in the first set."

The No. 23-ranked Hewitt, who underwent hip surgery in August last year, is targetting a Top 20 finish to the 2009 ATP World Tour season after slipping to No. 108 in the South African Airways 2009 ATP Rankings on 2nd February. Last week, he reached the semi-finals (l. to Youzhny) at the Rakuten Japan Open Tennis Championships.

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Czech Tomas Berdych fought hard to de-rail the in-form Marin Cilic, breaking serve in the final game of the match to defeat the No. 12 seed 7-6(8), 3-6, 6-4. It is Berdych’s second victory over Cilic, having also defeated the Croatian in five sets in the Davis Cup semi-finals last month.

World No. 20 Berdych reached back-to-back quarter-finals in Kuala Lumpur (l. to Soderling) and Tokyo (l. to Youzhny) in the past two weeks and has compiled a 33-22 mark on the year. The 24 year old, who won his fifth ATP World Tour title at the BMW Open (d. Youzhny) in May, next will face Marat Safin.

The No. 13-ranked Cilic is one of several players in the race to clinch a spot at the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals in November and boosted his bid with a runner-up finish at the China Open (l. to Djokovic) last week. The 21 year old, who ousted Andy Murray to reach his first Grand Slam quarter-final at the US Open, dropped to a 40-18 mark on the season.

Robin Soderling, a strong contender to qualify for the season finale in London, was rarely troubled as he cruised past Romanian Victor Hanescu 6-3, 6-4, breaking serve three times from six opportunities. The No. 11-ranked Swede, who reached his first major final at Roland Garros (l. to Federer) in June, is coming off consecutive semi-final showings in Kuala Lumpur (l. to Davydenko) and Beijing (l. to Djokovic) and improved to a 40-17 match record on the season.

The 25-year-old Soderling next will face Spaniard Nicolas Almagro, who fired 23 aces and saved eight of nine break points as he edged Philipp Kohlschreiber of Germany 6-7(2), 6-1, 7-6(6) in two hours and 11 minutes.

US Open champion Juan Martin del Potro will open his bid to win a first ATP World Tour Masters 1000 trophy against Jurgen Melzer after the Austrian dismissed Frenchman Jeremy Chardy 6-4, 6-4 with one service break in each set of the 64-minute match. Meanwhile, Croatian Ivan Ljubicic set up a second-round clash with seventh seed Fernando Verdasco after firing 16 aces to knock out Julien Benneteau of France 6-3, 3-6, 6-1.

Eighth seed Gilles Simon will face Viktor Troicki in the second round, after the Serbian crushed Argentine Juan Monaco 6-1, 6-2. Simon leads their head-to-head series 3-0, including victory in the final of the PTT Thailand Open two weeks ago.

In an all-German first-round clash, Tommy Haas defeated doubles partner Benjamin Becker 7-6(5), 6-4 to set up another all-German meeting with Rainer Schuettler in the second round. The No. 15 seed is playing his first tournament since a five-set loss to Fernando Verdasco in the third round of the US Open.

"Overall [I am] pretty pleased," said Haas. "It's never that easy to play [your] first match in such a long time. I had some time to take a little bit of time off and prepare myself for the last few events of the year, so [it's] never easy to play [a] countrymen or a player that you like and I'm pretty good friends with. Never easy, but I think the first set was quite important."