Del Potro defeats Dolgopolov to book fourth round at the BNP Paribas Open 2011
World number 90 Juan Martin Del Potro of Argentina defeated world number 23 Alexandr Dolgopolov of Ukraine to book his spot in the fourth round of the BNP Paribas Open 2011. The BNP Paribas Open is the first Masters event of the
year and is being held at the Indian Wells Tennis Gardens in Indian Wells, California.
Del Potro who has eight career titles to his name is just 22 years old. Now ranked 90th in the world, the Argentine was once ranked as high as 4th in the world. He encountered a wrist injury in 2010 which
forced him to withdraw from most of the tournaments during the year. He used his protected ranking to enter the qualifying competition of the tournament and nailed it to the fourth round.
Dolgopolov, who turned professional in 2006, is currently enjoying a career high ranking of 23 in the world. He is the top ranked Ukrainian male tennis player.
The pair never stood against each other at any of the ATP World Tour Masters series. Given their first meeting on court yesterday Potro emerged victorious taking a 1-0 lead in their career head-to-head.
The game started off with the Ukrainian dominating. He fired in six aces and kept his first serve percentage up at 50 per cent a slightly lower than his opponent. His opponent managed to deliver 52 per cent of his own first serves
correctly. Infuriating the Argentine's ordeal was the fact that Dolgopolov converted a whopping 82 per cent of his first serves into points, while Potro could only do 78 per cent. However, Potro managed to keep the score ticking on even terms as both players
continued winning games on their service pushing the set into a tie-breaker. In the tie-breaker Potro dominated his opponent securing a 7-3 win and in effect the first set.
Gaining confidence from winning the first set, Argentine was all set to put pressure on his opponent again, and that felt quite obvious when the Ukrainian lost his concentration in the second set as he double faulted four times
and lost three break points. He also had a lower first serve winning percentage of 63 per cent as compared to Potro’s 75 per cent. Second set was an easy deal for the Argentine who emerged victorious wrapping up a 6-3 win.
Potro has now improved his year-to-date win/loss record to 14-4. The Argentine will next face world number 35 Philipp Kohlschreiber of Germany in the next round. This will be the 3rd meeting between these two players. Potro leads
Kohlschreiber 2-0 in the head-to-head record. In their last meeting, Kohlschreiber emerged victorious as a walkover at the Vienna, Austria due to Potro’s series of injuries at the start of season in 2008.
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