David Guez edges past Nikola Ciric to make it to the main draws of the French Open
28-year-old French veteran David Guez powered his way to the main draws of the French Open after defeating Nikola Ciric of Serbia in the third round qualifiers on Saturday. Ranked 160th in the world, Guez laboured for
two hours and seven minutes before concluding the three-setter, 6-7(6), 6-2, 6-2, to move in the main round of the second Grand Slam event of the year.
The contest featured an enthralling game of pro tennis as the two men battled hard to get a chance to compete in main draws of the prestigious tournament. The opening set exhibited aggressive game from both contestants and was
eventually decided in the tie breaker round in the end. After dropping the opening set, Guez regrouped very quickly in the following set and totally demolished his Serbian opponent to level the game with one set a piece. He carried on his winning momentum
in the final set as well and finished off the demolition job by wrapping up the third set to conclude victory.
The contestants were equally good with their serve accuracy, delivering 63 per cent of their first serve on target. Ciric fired seven aces in the contest while the Frenchman only scored one ace en route to victory.
Guez was phenomenal with winning crucial points on regularity in throughout the contest and secured a total of 97 points in the game, with Ciric following him with 76. The Serb looked in terrific form in the first set but gradually
lost his steam as the game progressed. His plenty of unforced errors were the root cause of his failure in the competition, as he spilled out 43 unforced errors, including one double fault and seven aces.
The Serb registered his only break point of the match in the fifth game of the opener but Guez frittered away his advantage in the very next game to bring the scores to level terms again. A routine game was followed, which took
the scores to 6-6, enforcing a tie breaker round. The French hung in the tie breaker for quite a long time before Ciric took advantage of a mini-break to secure the first set at 7-6(6) to get one up in the contest.
The following two sets belonged to the French, who lost just four games in total to seal victory. Guez took down Ciric with the utmost ease in the second and third set, finishing off with the identical scores of 6-2 to advance
to the main draws of the France Open. He will take on the 31st seed Sergiy Stakhovsky of Ukraine in his opening round clash at Roland Garros.
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