Duo progress as Youzhny bows out

David Ferrer and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga had little trouble reaching the second round of the US Open but last year's semi-finalist Mikhail Youzhny was beaten in straight sets by Ernests Gulbis.

The 23-year-old has long been tipped as a future star of the game without ever quite living up to the hype but there have been signs recently that could be about to change.

Gulbis, a member of one of Latvia's wealthier families, won the ATP World Tour event in Los Angeles last month and reached the third round of the Masters event in Montreal to climb back to 53rd in the world rankings.

In contrast Youzhny, the 16th seed, lost his first matches in Montreal and Cincinnati and will lose big ranking points in comparison to last year's run, where he beat John Isner and Stanislas Wawrinka before going down to Rafael Nadal.

Gulbis got off to the perfect start today with two early breaks and Youzhny simply could not recover, the Russian eventually losing 6-2 6-4 6-4.

Fifth seed Ferrer also made a bad start and was 4-0 down to Russia's Igor Andreev but once the Spaniard got going he did not look back, powering to a 2-6 6-3 6-0 6-4 victory.

Eleventh seed Tsonga, fresh from wins over Roger Federer in the quarter-finals at Wimbledon and in Montreal, is considered a dark horse for the title and he was impressive in a 6-4 6-4 6-4 win over Lu Yen-hsun.