Bracciali/Starace battle past Knowles/Marrero to clinch title win – BRD Nastase Tiriac Trophy 2011
Third seeded Italians, Daniele Bracciali and Potito Starace bounced back to register a three setter victory over the fourth seeds, Austria’s Julian Knowles and Spain’s David Marrero at the 2011 BRD Nastase Tiriac Trophy, an ATP
World Tour 250 series event held on the outdoor clay courts in Bucharest, Romania. They registered a 3-6, 6-4, 10-8 victory over their rivals to clinch their second title together on Saturday.
The winning combination of Bracciali and Starace took almost one and half hours to rally past the lower seeds on their first meeting.
The Austrian Spanish tandem made quickly on-roads after entering the Romanian clay courts. They smoothly held their entire serves after fending off the only breakpoint face and converted two out of five breakpoint opportunities
to their advantage to clinch the opener with a 6-3 win.
Ranked 21st in the ATP World Tour Doubles rankings, the Italians re-focused to drill their way back in the game. They improved their co-ordination and aced zero breakpoint. In addition to this, Bracciali and Starace
capitalised on one out of two breakpoint chances to their advantage to seal the equaliser with a 6-4 score line.
Regardless of clobbering a lower first serve share of 67 percent as compared to their opponents’ 89 percent in the super tie-breaker, Bracciali and Starace registered a spectacular 83 percent win on it to bag the decider with a
10-8 victory.
Overall, the higher ranked pair formulated a lower first serve share of 68 percent as compared to Knowles and Marrero’s 87 percent but they earned a magnificent 77 percent win on it.
"Today the match turned in our way because of two points. Even if I'm more of a singles player winning a title is always a beautiful experience." said Starace.
"I arrived here really tired after the Davis Cup in Chile. But I didn't want to withdraw because of my partner Daniele Bracciali and since I thought we had a chance to win our first round I tried my best and it worked. After that
I still wasn't a 100 per cent because of the long trip but we played well."
Bracciali triumphed his third title of the season, all three with different partners. He won his first at s-Hertogenbosch with Frantisek Cermak and second at Kitzbuhel with Santiago Gonzalez. Starace, on the other hand, won his
first career title of the season.
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