Nadal stunned by Dodig in Montreal
Nadal, who relinquished his Wimbledon title and top ranking to Novak Djokovic last month, looked in charge in his first match since the final in south-west London when he took a one-sided opening set against Dodig.
But world number 41 Dodig fought back to take the next two on tie-breaks, twice coming from a break of serve behind in the deciding set, to triumph 1-6 7-6 (7/5) 7-6 (7/5) for the most impressive win of his career.
The 26-year-old fired 19 aces past Nadal, to seven by the Spaniard, as he avenged his straight-sets defeat on clay in the Barcelona semi-finals earlier this season.
While Nadal went out, Roger Federer and Djokovic came through their opening tests, having been handed first-round byes.
Federer will get the chance to take revenge over his Wimbledon conqueror Jo-Wilfried Tsonga after the pair advanced to a meeting in the third round.
Tsonga came from two sets down to stun Federer at the All England Club and also recovered a big deficit to beat the Swiss star the last time they met in Montreal two years ago.
Federer defeated Canadian wild card Vasek Pospisil 7-5 6-3 in an hour and 17 minutes, while Tsonga took the same time to beat another Wimbledon star, Australian Bernard Tomic, 6-3 7-6 (7/1).
Federer told atptour.com: "I will not think about that Wimbledon match as much as I might think about the match we had here two years ago. Both matches were, so to speak, not normal matches."
Top seed Djokovic moved through to the third round with a 7-5 6-1 win over Nikolay Davydenko although the score did not reflect serving problems which saw the world number one broken four times.
Fifth seed Gael Monfils beat American qualifier Alex Bogomolov Jr 6-2 7-6 (7/5) while there were also wins for seventh seed Tomas Berdych, eighth seed Nicolas Almagro, plus Richard Gasquet, Stanislas Wawrinka and Ivo Karlovic.
Dodig's fellow Croatian Marin Cilic caused a minor upset by beating the Argentinian 16th seed, Juan Martin Del Potro, 6-3 6-4.
Serbian 12th seed Viktor Troicki marched on, beating American John Isner 6-4 3-6 6-2.
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