Frenchman Simon cruises through in Brisbane tennis Second seeded Frenchman Gilles Simon cruised into the second round of the Brisbane International with a comfortable straight sets win over American Ryan Sweeting on Monday. Despite losing his first service game, the world number 12 was never in any trouble as he moved to a 6-3, 6-4 victory over the big-serving Sweeting. Simon has flown under the radar, with most of the attention focused on Britain's top seed Andy Murray. But after a superb 2011, during which he won two ATP tournaments and took his ranking from 41 to 12, Simon showed he cannot be discounted this week. "For the first match of the season I think I played some good tennis," he said. The conditions (on the outside court) were very hard, with the sun very low and a little bit of noise also, so it was hard to focus. But I felt better and better throughout the match and had no problems until I was down a break point at the very end. Simon said his goal this year was to return to the top 10 for the first time since 2009, when he reached number six before suffering a knee injury. "I really want to win a Masters series tournament or a Slam this year," he said. Two years ago I was six in the world but I want to improve on that and to do that I have to beat the top guys and win one of the major tournaments. That is my aim for this year. Earlier, rising Australian star Bernard Tomic showed how far he has progressed in the last 12 months when he beat experienced Frenchman Julien Benneteau in three sets. Tomic needed a wildcard to make the Brisbane tournament in 2011 but he has risen so quickly in the world rankings that this year he is the eighth seed. He started brilliantly against Benneteau, racing to a 5-0 lead in the first set before the Frenchman began a stirring comeback, winning the second and pushing the 19-year-old Tomic right to the wire in the third, only to hand the Australian the match with a double fault. The first set I played the right tennis the way I've been training. It was really good -- I played really well and didn't give him a chance," Tomic said. The second set the match turned around and it just showed that you lose a few points and the whole match can turn around to the point you can probably lose it in the third so I'm happy to get through. To get back from a situation like that is good. Fourth seed Florian Mayer of Germany bowed out after he withdrew with a groin injury against Ukraine's Denis Istomin while trailing 6-7 (5/7), 3-2, while Luxembourg's Gilles Muller downed Ricardo Mello of Brazil 6-7 (3/7), 7-6 (7/4), 6-3.