Sportmaster International

Delray Beach, FL - Top seed James Blake was an easy 6-3, 6-2 winner over fellow American Robert Kendrick in a round-robin match Tuesday at the Delray Beach International Tennis Championships.Blake, ranked sixth in the world, made quick work of the 87th-ranked player on Tuesday. He’ll face another low-ranked countryman Wednesday in No. 390 Scoville Jenkins.In other action involving seeds at Delray Beach Tennis Center, No. 3 Belgian Xavier Malisse beat Colombian Alejandro Falla 6-4, 7-6 (8-6) and veteran Italian Davide Sanguinetti subdued sixth-seeded

German Philipp Kohlschreiber 7-5, 6-3. Malisse titled here in 2005, was the runner-up in 2001 and was last year’s runner-up to German Tommy Haas. Sanguinetti was the champion here in 2002 and the runner-up back in 1998.Additional round-robin play saw Russian Teimuraz Gabashvili outlast Dane Kristian Pless 7-6 (11-9), 6-7 (2-7), 7-6 (7-5), American Sam Querrey cut down Taipei’s Yen-Hsun Lu 7-6 (12-10), 6-4 and Romanian Andrei Pavel paste Russian Igor Kunitsyn 6-1, 6-3.In one final main-draw elimination match, Ryan Sweeting got past his fellow American Michael Russell 7-6 (7-4), 2-2, as Russell retired due to an illness.This tournament is one of the new round-robin events on the ATP schedule and featured a qualifying session that put winners into the main draw of the 24- player field.The round-robin format featured eight main-draw elimination matches, with the winners advancing to the round robin, which has eight groups of three players. The winners of each group will advance to the single-elimination quarterfinals and the normal progression takes over until a champion is crowned.© 2007 The Sports Network