Top seed Richard Gasquet got some much needed mileage into his legs as he beat Great Britain's Dan Evans in the Winston-Salem Open.
Gasquet is playing just his second tournament since retiring from his fourth-round clash at Wimbledon due to a back injury and got a good second-round work out against Evans in a 6-4 4-6 6-3 win in North Carolina.
With most of the top 20 heading opting to miss out on this tournament and head straight to New York to prepare for next week's US Open, the world number 15 has no such luxury as he aims to get as much game time as he can ahead of Flushing Meadows.
There were first-round wins for Americans Donald Young and Taylor Fritz over Pieree-Hugues Herbert and Frances Taifoe respectively while Jiri Vesely beat Tim Van Rijthoven.
Mikhail Youzhny won a topsy-turvy clash with James Duckworth 7-6 (8/6) 1-6 6-3 but then had to withdraw ahead of his scheduled second-round tie with Russian compatriot Andrey Kuznetsov.
Kyle Edmund, Aljaz Bedene, Lukas Rosol, Guillermo Garcia-Lopez, Malek Jaziri, John Millman and Diego Schwartzman all made it through to the second round while Stephane Robert joins Gasquet in the third round after a 6-4 5-7 6-4 win over Federico Delbonis.
Source: PA
