top seed kei nishikori made a successful start to his barcelona open title defence with a straight sets victory over teymuraz gabashvili on tuesday japan's nishikori emerged triumphant from the second round encounter after seeing off his russian opponent 6 3 6 4 the other seeds to advance to the third round were both spaniards   seventh seed roberto bautista agut with a 6 3 6 4 win over thomaz bellucci of brazil, and ninth seed tommy robredo, the 2004 champion who was a 6 3 6 2 victor against kazakhstan's mikhail kukushkin top seed kei nishikori made a successful start to his barcelona open title defence with a straight sets victory  japan's nishikori emerged triumphant from the second round encounter after seeing off teymuraz gabashvili  nishikori celebrates after defeating gabashvili during day two of the barcelona open  eight time champion rafael nadal's first match of this year's tournament will be a second round clash with fellow spaniard nicolas almagro, whose first round contest against paolo lorenzi came to a premature end when the italian retired after three games also in round one on tuesday, albert montanes set up a meeting with fellow home favourite david ferrer   the third seed   by beating lithuanian ricardas berankis 1 6 6 4 7 5 madrid born 2010 champion fernando verdasco crashed out of the competition against andrey rublev  dominican victor estrella burgos defeated dominic thiem of austria 6 3 7 6 (7/3) to progress to a meeting with croatia's fourth seed marin cilic another spaniard appearing in round two will be fifth seed feliciano lopez, taking on marsel ilhan following the turk's 7 6 (7/2) 3 6 6 1 victory against great britain's james ward but madrid born 2010 champion fernando verdasco's participation is over after he lost 7 6 (7/4) 6 3 to russian qualifier andrey rublev
japan kei nishikori second russian barcelona rafael nadal's first spaniard nicolas almagro
japan's kei nishikori emerged triumphant from  second round encounter . he beat his russian challenger in straight sets of 6 3 6 4 in barcelona . rafael nadal's first match  will be against fellow spaniard nicolas almagro 