Australian 10th seed Mark Philippoussis has lost his first round match at the ATP Hamburg Masters Series tennis event to unseeded Swedish hope Joachim Johansson.

Philippoussis exited the tournament in straight sets with a 7-6 (7/5) 6-1 loss to the 21-year-old who comes from the birthplace of tennis legend Bjorn Borg, Sodertalje, near Stockholm.

Earlier, Marat Safin, the temperamental former world number one, went through his familiar repertoire, breaking a racket, gaining a code violation warning and upsetting the seedings in the fifth Masters Series of the year.

The 24-year-old Russian continued his attempt to regain the pinnacle with a tempestuous 7-6 (8/6), 7-5 win over Sebastien Grosjean, the eighth-seeded Frenchman, who held two set points in the first set and led 5-1 in the tie-break.

Grosjean and Philippoussis were not the only seeds to exit on the first day of the tournament as Paradorn Srichaphan's miserable clay court season continued as he went out in straight sets to Olivier Rochus while the Czech Republic's Jiri Novak was another high-profile casualty going down to Germany's wild card entrant Florian Mayer in three sets.

Safin was not happy with his play despite his battling performance.

"Neither of us played well," claimed Safin.

"It was a pain in the arse to stay there and try to struggle. It was a nightmare to play this kind of tennis. He should have won that first set."

Safin nevertheless fought hard from 2-5 down in that set, playing out a large number of consistent rallies, broke back tenaciously when Grosjean was serving for it at 5-3, and produced a model point to save the set when he was advantage point down on his serve at 4-5.

But his frustration boiled over when he missed a chance to reach set point in the next game, sending a forehand drive into the net from inside the baseline, and putting a moderate return of serve into the net on the next point.

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