Dubai: Fourth seed Tomas Berdych took a step towards a personal milestone with a 7-6 (2), 6-4 win over Frenchman Jeremy Chardy in their opening round match of the Dubai Duty Free Men’s Open here on Tuesday.

A losing finalist here in the past two years, Berdych is now just one match shy of becoming the seventh active player to claim 500 wins on the ATP World Tour. Tuesday’s win against his French opponent was his 499th — which improved his Dubai record to 18-8.

Berdych was in his zone early in the set as the Czech broke Chardy for an early 2-0 lead. The Frenchman came right back till the deciding tiebreaker that the fourth seed went on to win 7-2. The second set was a breezy affair as Berdych came up with a couple of breaks to finish off with ease to set up a second round meeting with Simon Bolelli.

“Some of the things were a little bit on my side that I made it complicated a bit more than usual. But what is important is the outcome and it’s important that I won the last point of the match and get through. Not every day is going to be perfect. We don’t have to be perfect,” Berdych said.

“Wining matches is what I am trying to do. You know, definitely keep winning the matches is going to be very positive to that,” he added.

The Czech has had an amazing start to the season with two finals — Doha where he lost to David Ferrer and earlier this month in Rotterdam where he lost to Stanislas Wawrinka. Berdych also made it to the semi-finals of the Australian Open where he lost to Andy Murray.

He will now take on Simone Bolelli after the Italian secured a 6-3, 6-3 win over French qualifier Lucas Pouille. “He’s (Bolelli) is definitely the guy that’s playing really well these last couple of weeks. I mean, winning the doubles title in Melbourne, it also gives you a lot of confidence for your singles and hence he is playing well,” Berdych noted.

“It’s not going to be an easy one to play, especially in these fast conditions. That’s what he likes, so I’m going to definitely have to bring my better game, playing better and just try to go for it again,” he said.

In other earlier matches, Sergiy Stakhovsky improved his record to 2-0 against Czech Republic’s Lukas Rosol with a hard-fought 4-6, 6-1, 6-4 while qualifier Marsel Ilhan of Turkey continued with his run in the main draw with a 6-1, 7-6 (4) win against German teenager and wild card Alexander Zverev.