Mardy Fish had to overcome the weather and Marco Crugnola before progressing into the next round of the Delray Beach International.
American ovecomes the weather and rival to progress
American Mardy Fish had to overcome the weather and Marco Crugnola before progressing into the next round of the Delray Beach International.
The eighth-seed had to sit out a six-hour rain delay in Florida as the horrendous conditions saw less than half of the scheduled 11 games completed.
And following his 6-1 7-5 victory, Fish admitted: "It's not fun. But I've played in a lot of windy conditions, practiced in a lot of windy conditions growing up around here. I've seen even worse than this, but it's really windy."
Fish was in imperious form in the first set as he rattled of the first five games before Crugnola managed to briefly stop the rot.
The second set was a tighter affair with the Italian scrapping his way into a 5-4 lead - however Fish held his serve before crucially breaking Crugnola in the 11th game and then serving out for the match.
Confidence
Gilles Muller signalled that he is on his way to his best with a 7-5 7-6 (7-4) win over wild-card Jessie Levine.
Muller, ranked 129 in the world, has notable wins over Andre Agassi and Andy Roddick in the past - however this victory was his first on the ATP this year.
And the 24-year-old admitted his past triumphs had a negative affect on him.
He said: "People would say, 'How come you can beat Roddick and you can beat Agassi?' So I had a feeling I could only lose.
"I was thinking about that and losing my place in the rankings and losing my confidence."
Igor Kunitsyn, Max Mirnyi and Michael Russell are also all through to the next stage.
Kunitsyn recorded a 6-3 7-6 (7-1) win over Benjamin Becker; Mirnyi, was too strong for Luka Gregorc in his 7-6 (7-5) 6-2 victory; and Russell needed just 49 minutes to depose of fellow American Alex Bogomolov Jnr 6-1 6-0.
