World No.6 Tomas Berdych reached the quarter finals of the Japan Open on Thursday after beating Colombia’s Alejandro Falla.
The 2008 Tokyo champion, from the Czech Republic, raced to a straightforward 6-3 7-5 victory over Falla in just 78 minutes and without facing a single break point.
“The biggest difference between my first round and this one is… it was already a couple of days after I came here. I was feeling really much, much better physically than in the first match,” said Berdych.
“I was able to profit from that, I was serving well, playing solid and when I had a chance, I took it,” added Berdych, who reached the US Open semi-finals last month.
Second seeded Berdych hit a fine back-handed approach shot to seize a triple break in the sixth game of the opening set, before striking a key passing shot that decided the winner of the set.
The 27-year-old Czech calmly served three aces in a row against a dispirited Falla to finish off the match.
In the quarter-finals on Friday, Berdych will play either eighth seed Kei Nishikori of Japan or Tommy Robredo of Spain.
In other matches on Thursday, third seed Janko Tipsarevic of Serbia beat Marco Chiudinelli of Switzerland 6-4 6-2, while sixth seed Milos Raonic of Canada went through when Serb Viktor Troicki retired with a calf injury.