Fabio Fognini upsets Jeremy Chardy to qualify for the main draw – Western & Southern Open 2012
Italy’s eighth seeded contestant, Fabio Fognini, fought back after getting down in the first set to overcome the top seeded, Jeremy Chardy of France, in the final qualifier at the Western & Southern Open in Cincinnati on Sunday.
Fognini lost the first set 3-6 but then grabbed two consecutively 6-1, 7-6(5) to win the contest in an hour and 59 minutes to book his place in the main draw.
Chardy made an amazing start to the match, as he stung breaks in the first, third and fifth games, holding all of his own serves in between to race to a 5-0 lead. Fognini took a lot of time to respond but he struck in the sixth
to open his account and reduce the trail to 1-5. The Italian player clinched two more games in a row to take the score to 3-5 but he failed to hold his serve in the ninth, dropping the opener 3-6.
Ranked 38th in the world, Chardy hit a single ace and made the same number of double fault in the first set. The Frenchman had a low first serve percentage of 42 and converted six of the 10 of them into points.
Chardy started the second set by holding his opening serve to gain a 1-0 lead. However, Fognini completely turned around the proceedings after that, as he did not allow the French participant to win even a single game, breaking
him three times and consolidating on all of them to grab it 6-1.
The Italian contender neither hit an ace nor committed a double fault, putting in 57 percent of the first serve and pocketing 10 of the 13 points on them. The 25-year-old won most of the points on his aggressive second returns,
as he converted 10 of the 12 of them into points. The 5ft 10 in tall saved all the three break threats he came across and availed three of the four chances he created in the second set.
There was a tough competition between Fognini and Chardy in the decider, as they did not allow each other to break serve in the first eight games to level the score at 4-4. The French contestant grabbed breakthrough in the ninth
to go up 5-4 but he was unable to serve out the match, evening out the proceedings at 5-5. The set was taken to a tie-breaker, where Fognini hit a late blow and made the most of it to win 7-5.
The Italian player will play the world number 24, Florian Mayer, in the first round of the main draw.
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