Second seeded Roger Federer was pushed all the way by Canadian Vasek Pospisil for the first two sets in their second round match at the ATP 1000 Western and Southern Open in Cincinnati.
In the first set, Pospisil had chances on the Federer serve as the Swiss served to stay in the set at 4-5 and 5-6, but the Canadian could not take them and the Swiss' experience helped him through the tiebreak.
But Pospisil was not to be denied in the second set and with Federer serving to stay in at 5-6, Pospisil earned a break point and converted it to level the match at a set all.
In the third set, though, the Pospisl challenge ended. Federer broke for 2-1, then broke again for 4-1 and held serve to take the third set 6-2.
Other seeded players in action were eighth seed Andy Murray who cruised past Joao Sousa 6-3, 6-3. Sixteenth seed Tommy Robredo was also a comfortable winner against Sam Querrey, winning 6-3, 6-4. And fifteenth seed Fabio Fognini eased past former world No.1 Lleyton Hewitt 6-1, 6-4.
Not all the seeds cruised through though. Sixth seed David Ferrer was pushed to three tiebreak sets by big-hitting Philipp Kohlschreiber. Meanwhile fourteeth seed Marin Cilic needed two tiebreakers to get past Fernando Verdasco.
And some seeds did not make it past the round of 32. One of those was seventh seed who suffered a surprise loss to 65th ranked 2013 Wimbledon Semi-finalist Jerzy Janowicz. Another upset was the loss of fourth seed Tomas Berdych who was beaten 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 by his Washington conqueror Yen Hsun-Lu.
Mikhail Youznhy, who caused the upset of the previous round when he knocked out Toronto champion Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, followed up that impressive win with a victory over Andreas Seppi.
One man who was not able to follow up a surprise win was Britain's James Ward. The qualifier went down to 41st ranked Julien Benneteau 6-2, 6-2.
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