Donald Young outlasts Grigor Dimitrov in the opening round: Regions Morgan Keegan Championships 2012
Crowd favourite, Donald Young, required three long sets to outmuscle the Bulgarian star, Grigor Dimitrov, at the Regions Morgan Keegan Championships 2012 on Monday. He formulated a 7-6(4), 4-6, 7-6(6) victory over the world number 83 to secure a place in the second round at this hard court tournament taking place in Memphis, United States.
The Chicago native took two hours and 23-minutes to tumble over Dimitrov in their second outing. Both stars previously met each other at the Winston-Salem ATP event last year and after pocketing this match, Young not only avenged his loss but also levelled the FedEx ATP Head 2 Head series by 1-1 against the Bulgarian.
Ranked 41st in the South African Airways ATP World Tour Rankings, Young took the opener to a tie-breaker after exchanging two serve breaks and dominated in it to clinch the set with a 7-6(4) score line. The American cashed in half of the four break chances and saved three out of five breakpoints he came across.
The 20-year-old on the other side of net hit back in the following set. The Bulgarian failed to defend the only breakpoint he encountered but broke Young’s serve twice, ultimately sealing the equaliser by winning six games to four.
The match could have gone in any direction at that point and the contender who re-gathered his form was the local star. Young sought nine break opportunities but converted one to his advantage. On the other hand he saved one out of two breakpoints he faced and took the set to a tie-breaker. The higher ranked double faulted at the match point to tie the scores at 6-6. However, he held his composure again and bagged the decider with a 7-6(6) win.
Overall, Young coughed more double faults and lost his serve five times. Nevertheless, he found 14 break opportunities and capitalised on four of them to prevail.
Up next for Young is the conqueror of the match between top seeded John Isner and Luxembourgian challenger, Gilles Muller.
On another court, Croatian ace Ivan Dodig stunned the eighth seed, Bernard Tomic, in troublesome three sets to book a round of 16 spot.
"I was really happy after the match because I've been losing tight, tight matches," the Croat commented after the match. "This is going to give me more confidence."
Dodig will square off against the winner of the match between Jurgen Melzer of Denis Istomin.
Tags: