Benoit Paire battles past Steve Darcis to reach the quarter-final round – Open Sud de France 2013
Eighth seeded home favourite, Benoit Paire, had to go through some real rough ride before dumping the unseeded Belgian challenger, Steve Darcis, in the second round battle of Open Sud de France tournament on Wednesday. The world
number 43 laboured extremely hard for two hours and 16 minutes before settling the final score line in the third set, 4-6, 7-6(11), 6-4, to book a post in the quarter-final round of the ATP World Tour 250 tournament in Montpellier, France.
It was an evenly contested battle, with the 94th ranked Belgian meeting blow-by-blow with the eighth seeded Frenchman. Despite of his inferior ranking, Darcis played remarkably well and had everything under control at
one point in the contest. He was mere inches away from bagging an upset victory in the second set tie-break but Paire turned the tables on him at the last moment. The eighth seeded French just went on with his impetus and snatched away victory from the mouth
of defeat in a convincing manner.
The contest started with an early break point conversion from Darcis, imposing a 3-1 lead over the hot favourite Paire. The eighth seed retaliated in the sixth game and broke back to level the score line to 3-3. However, the Belgian
underdog nailed his second break point of the day and served out of the opener at 5-4 to get into the driving seat.
A much competitive set was followed, with both players utterly failing to break their opponent’s serve. A regular game was seen and score line kept on moving on even terms, until a deadlock came at 6-6. The tie-break round also
went to the wire, with Paire desperately fighting to remain alive in the competition. Darcis had a match point at 10-9 but was denied by the brilliance of the Frenchman. Paire took the second set at 7-6(11) in the end.
The eighth seeded contender broke his opponent in the very first game of the final set to create early pressure on him. Darcis couldn’t recover from the early blow and kept lingering behind his opponent. Paire finally came out
as the winner at 6-4.
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