Alejandro Falla ousts qualifier Laurynas Grigelis in opener – Farmers Classic 2011
Colombian Alejandro Falla proceeds to the second round of the Farmers Classic, a US Open series tournament held at the Straus Stadium, Los Angeles. Falla secured a convincing 2-0 win against his opponent, the qualifier from Lithuania,
Laurynas Grigelis. With this loss the journey of the two Lithuanians Grigelis and Richard Berankis ends in the tournament. Berankis lost his opening match against special exempt Ryan Harrison earlier on Tuesday.
Currently ranked at No. 92, Falla had a memorable performance in last year’s Wimbledon where he played against the then top seed Roger Federer; losing only after battling it out for five lengthy sets. The former No. 58 registered
his best performance of this season at Rolland Garros where he qualified to main draws and went on till the fourth round before losing to Juan Ignacio Chela.
Grigelis is performing excellently in the Challenger’s circuit but has failed to make an indelible mark on the ATP tour. Previously in the tournament, Grigelis had qualified for the main draws by defeating French Clement Reix.
The first set witnessed excellent performance by Falla who successfully made full use of the two opportunities to break Grigelis’ serves and registered 2 damaging breakpoints. Grigelis on the contrary failed to even set up a single
breakpoint opportunity against his opponent. Falla served at a lowly 42% but countered this by winning 70% of his first serve points and 10 of his 14 second serve points. The set went to Falla by an undeniably huge margin at 6-2.
The second set saw a relatively better show of skills by Grigelis, who served at 59% comfortably above Falla’s 45%. He even managed to win 13 points off his 20 serves but failed to utilise a breakpoint opportunity early in the
set. Taking full advantage of this discrepancy, Falla soldiered ahead by registering a serve break and effectively closed the second set 6-4 to win the match in under 70 minutes.
Falla now moves on to the second round of the Farmers Classic where he’ll compete for a spot in the next round against fourth seed Thomaz Bellucci. Bellucci had earlier received a bye to the second round.
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