Fifth seed Robin Soderling made short work of Italian wild card Paolo Lorenzi at the ATP Rome Masters 1000 on Wednesday, reaching the third round with a 6-1, 7-5 victory.
The Swede blasted 32 winners to just nine by his opponent as he cruised to victory in just under an hour and a quarter to equal his best ever performance here from last year.
The 25-year-old is enjoying a stand-out year having won the title in Rotterdam and reaching last week's final in Barcelona in his first clay court event of the season.
Before that he also reached back-to-back Masters semi-finals in Indian Wells and Miami and is at a career high seven in the world rankings.
Soderling may have been thrashed here by Nadal last year but he then knocked the Spaniard out at Roland Garros in the fourth round before reaching his first ever Grand Slam semi-final.
Australian veteran and former Wimbledon champion Lleyton Hewitt's tournament came to an early end as he was beaten in the second round by Spain's Guillermo Garcia-Lopez 6-2, 6-3.
Copyright 2010  AFP Global Edition
