Benoit Paire outdoes wild card Pablo Carreno-Busta in three sets at Barcelona
Qualifier Benoit Paire of France finished a tough match just minutes ago, defeating Spanish wild card and World Number 314 Pablo Carreno-Busta in three gruelling sets at the 2011 Barcelona Open Banc Sabadell. The French tennis
pro, who could not gain direct entry into the ATP World Tour Masters 500 series and had to go through qualifying rounds, managed to fight his way back into the match after losing the first set. He made it to the second round of the clay tournament by winning
the encounter 6-7(7), 6-3, 6-2. The pro took a little under two hours and ten minutes to send his opponent off the court in defeat.
The two players were evenly matched in the first set, although Paire is much higher ranked than 19-year-old Carreno-Busta and was expected to retain control over the match from the beginning. However, the young Spaniard played
inspired tennis in the first set and managed to win just one point more than his opponent to take set 7-6(7) after a tie-breaker.
However, it seemed as if this was all the leeway that Paire was willing to give to his young opponent. The French qualifier blazed into the second set with guns drawn, and managed to break Carreno-Busta twice without even being
brought to break point once. He fired off one ace and capitalized on Carreno-Busta solitary double fault to take the advantage, and won 57 per cent of the points in the set to win the second set 6-3. This pushed the match into a third set to determine a winner.
The third set was even easier for Paire, who seemed to have hit his stride at this point. He managed to convert all three of his break in this set, although he was broken once by the Spaniard. However, the qualifier managed to
win the set with an impressive 58 per cent of the total points in the match. This led him to win the match with a score-line of 6-7(7), 6-3, 6-2.
The World Number 121 will take Spanish pro Albert Montanes in the second round of the tournament.
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