BNP Paribas Open 2011, Men's Qualifiers: Ryan Sweeting defeats Jesse Witten to enter main draw
The United States of America's Ryan Sweeting defeated his compatriot Jesse Witten easily to progress into the main draw of the BNP Paribas Open 2011. Sweeting was competing to be one of the 12 qualifiers that gain entry to the 96-man main draw of the first
Masters event of the year, and he qualified in style, winning his match 6-1, 6-4. The tournament is being held at the Indian Wells Tennis Gardens in Indian Wells, California.
Sweeting is the current world no.105. He is 23 years of age and recieved a wildcard into the qualifiers here. His opponent, Witten, has been playing tennis professionally for 5 years now and is ranked 209th in the world at the age of 28. Sweeting, due to
his much higher ranking, was always the favored contender going into the match, and so he proved to be from the get go.
The first set saw the higher ranked player serve much better than his opponent. The 23-year-old managed to land 71 per cent of his first serves correctly. Witten, on the other hand, only delivered 50 per cent of his serves once.
The situation was the same as far as converting first serves into points was concerned. Sweeting won 70 per cent of the points his first serve struck true on, compared to his opponent's much lower 57 per cent.
This allowed the higher ranked player some room to dominate the return play as well, and he managed to win 57 per cent of the points that he returned on. Due to this, he managed to create three chances to break for himself, out of which 2 he converted. Up
two breaks, the set went to him easily, 6-1.
The story of the second set was much the same, but saw Witten improve his play somewhat. Although he only managed to get 48 per cent of his first serves correct, he was much better at converting them into points. He managed to win 86 per cent of the points
he served once on, compared to Sweeting's much lower conversion rate of 58 per cent.
The back and forth play intensified this time, and both players managed to win almost the same amount of points on the return. They also created the same number of break points, and it was the fact that Sweeting availed more of his opportunities that made
the difference. The world no.105 converted 2 of his break points into breaks and despite being broken once himself, held on to take the match 6-4.
While Sweeting's main draw opponent has not yet been decided, he shall look to do well in his home major.
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