Argentine Canas makes confident start in Barcelona

By Simon Cambers

BARCELONA (Reuters) - Argentine Guillermo Canas, still rebuilding after a left wrist injury, opened his Barcelona Open campaign on Monday with a 6-1 6-4 first-round win over unseeded Spaniard Oscar Hernandez.

Ninth seed Canas, the runner-up to Rafael Nadal last year, cruised through the first set and kept his concentration in the second to see off Hernandez, ranked 72.

Having missed the Australian Open because of injury, Canas returned to the tour in Acapulco in late February and reached the semi-finals of the ATP event in Las Vegas.

The 30-year-old, now ranked 31, will play either Russian Teimuraz Gabashvili or his compatriot Guillermo Coria, the former French Open runner-up who was granted a wildcard.

Croatian Mario Ancic, himself in the early stages of a comeback from illness and injury, crushed German Mischa Zverev 6-1 6-0 to set up a second-round meeting with seventh seed Andy Murray of Britain.

Ancic, who was ranked in the top 10 in 2006, missed six months of 2007 because of glandular fever, but has climbed to the verge of the world's top 50 thanks to a run of form that included a final appearance in Marseille in February, where he lost to Murray.

"I think he was struggling a little bit on the clay," Ancic said of Zverev.

"I was happy that I played solid from the first to the last point. It's never easy when you win the first set so easy but I played well, served well and didn't let anything slip through my hands.