Rafael Nadal Will Cruise Past Martin Klizan in 2nd Round at 2013 French Open

After an early scare from Daniel Brands in his opening match at the 2013 French Open, don't expect seven-time champion Rafael Nadal to be caught off guard in the second round at Roland Garros.

Nadal is scheduled to take on unseeded Slovakian Martin Klizan in Round 2, a 23-year-old who enters Paris with a 6-13 singles record this season, ranked 35th in the world.

But while Rafa displayed some vulnerability in his first two sets against Brands on Monday, he quickly showed why he is considered the favorite to win on the Paris clay year after year, outplaying Brands when it mattered most in the second set tiebreaker before going on to take the final two sets.

In the final two sets, Nadal connected on a remarkable 94 percent of his first serves, keeping Brands under pressure and shutting down all three of the German's opportunities to break.

That's what Klizan will be dealing with in the second round.

He'll be taking on a player who is capable of turning up his game in big moments. Plus, in a best-of-five set match, Rafa has plenty of time to adjust and recover. Therefore, underdogs like Brands and Klizan are forced to play near-flawless tennis for longer stretches.

And while Nadal's clay-court success needs very little explanation, Klizan on the other hand, has struggled immensely on the surface as of late.

Since the start of the Monte Carlo Masters last month and prior to his first-round win over American Michael Russell at this summer's French Open, Klizan was just 1-4 on the clay, bowing out in the first round at Monte Carlo, Madrid and Rome.

Meanwhile, Brands had previously reached the quarterfinals in Bucharest and the semifinals at the BMW Open in Munich.

Therefore, the case can easily be made that Brands was and is the hotter of the two early-round challengers at Roland Garros. What's more, keep in mind that Brands' opening set win marked just the 15th set Nadal has lost at the French Open since 2005.

Look for Rafael Nadal, motivated by his first-round struggles, to cruise through his second-round match against Martin Klizan this week, winning in straight sets to remind the rest of the men's field why he's in position to win an eighth French Open title. 

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