French No.6 seed Jo-Wilfried Tsonga has booked his passage through to the third round of the Australian Open with a straight sets success over Brazil's Ricardo Mello.
Tsonga, a beaten finalist in Melbourne four years ago, worked hard to get past the world No.108, progressing 7-5 6-4 6-4 in a match which lasted just shy of two hours.
The 26-year-old Frenchman looked to be struggling early on, falling behind to an early break from Mello, but a double fault from the Brazilian in the seventh game and a brave net approach on break point in the 11th allowed Tsonga to take the first set.
He then broke Mello in the first game of the second set, and while Mello had a chance to get it back on serve in both the eighth and tenth game, Tsonga closed it out.
Broken in the sixth game of the third set, Tsonga looked a little wobbly, but he relied on his big serve, which yielded 15 aces for the match, to consolidate and break Mello in consecutive service games to put himself on the path to a third round clash with either Spaniard Marcel Granollers or Portugal's Frederico Gil.
Another powerful unit, Canadian Milos Raonic, fought his way through to the third round for the second consecutive year with a 6-4 5-7 6-2 7-5 win over German Phillip Petzschner.
The rising star got the only break of the first set in the first game to get things off on the right track but was under pressure on serve throughout the second set and eventually gave up the set in the 12th game when he was broken.
He responded by immediately breaking Petzschner, the world No.63, in the opening game of the third set and breaking him again in the seventh to take a two-sets-to-one lead.
In a tight fourth set, the pair exchanged breaks in the ninth and 10th games before the Canadian got the decisive break in the 11th. He thought he secured match point with an ace, which was called a let, but he eventually got the job done. Next up is either of the veteran pair Andy Roddick or Lleyton Hewitt.
No.27 seed Juan Ignacio Chela eased his way through to the final 32 with a 6-4 6-4 6-3 win over Spain's Pablo Andujar, while the campaign on No.32 seed Alex Bogomolov Jr came to an early end when he was beaten in a five-setter by French veteran Michael Llodra.
Llodra took the first two sets, but the born-again Russian fought back to level the match and send it to a decider. But he faltered at the crucial moment leaving Llodra to win 6-1 6-3 4-6 5-7 6-4, with a match against either Andy Murray or Edouard Roger-Vasselin next up.