Nadal, Federer and Safina sparkle in Paris

By Pritha Sarkar

PARIS (Reuters) - World number ones Rafael Nadal and Dinara Safina dazzled their opponents in the Parisian sun on Monday to blaze into the second round of the French Open.

Brazil's Marcos Daniel fought valiantly for almost 2-1/2 hours before suffering the same fate as four-times champion Nadal's previous 28 opponents at the claycourt grand slam, going down 7-5 6-4 6-3.

Roland Garros also caught a brief glimpse of Safina -- although if you blinked you might have missed her -- as the Russian white-washed Britain's Anne Keothavong 6-0 6-0.

Roger Federer would have preferred to have got even more hot and bothered but that did not stop him from hotfooting into the last 64 with a 6-4 6-3 6-2 victory over Spaniard Alberto Martin.

"In America and Australia we play at 40, 45 degrees so it's still pretty mild for my liking," said the Swiss referring to the court temperatures of 30 degrees Celsius.

The crowd had barely had time to file into Centre Court and settle into their baking-hot plastic seats before Safina, who looks poised to improve on her 2008 runner-up finish, had dashed back into the cooler confines of the locker room.

So ferocious were Safina's groundstrokes that a linesman was lucky to dodge one of her missiles. Keothavong might have won 33 points but 24 of these came from Safina's unforced errors.

Despite being on the receiving end of the 61-minute hammering, Keothavong at least saw the funny side.