Thursday, 29th of October

Rafa Nadal conserved his valuable energy in his Paris Masters opener on Wednesday as he required just 73 minutes for a 6-2, 6-4 second-round victory over Florent Serra.

He tore through the opening set in 27 minutes against an opponent who had taken five games in total from two previous meetings and in the second, he staved off a sole break point in the fourth game then broke for a 3-2 lead before Serra twice drove long to hand the Spaniard victory in 1hr 14min.

Coming off a first-round bye, Rafa produced a quick victory with 20 winners and three breaks of serve to go through for a next-round meeting with Frenchman Gael Monfils.

The Spanish top seed confesses he's running out of puff in the closing stages of a long season, and every easy victory provides a fraction more time to rest and recover.

Rafa owns eight titles from 2008 including Paris, Wimbledon and Olympic and still has this week, the Masters Cup in Shanghai as well as a late November Davis Cup final in Argentina to go before he can pause for perhaps a month before the 2009 start.

Rafa's victory was his 81st of the season against just 10 losses. The Spaniard, Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray and Nikolay Davydenko are already qualified for the eight-man year-end event in Shanghai.

The last three places are being decided this week in Paris as the regular season ends.