Feliciano Lopez thrashes Janko Tipsarevic in opening round – Shanghai Rolex Masters 2011
Feliciano Lopez, Spanish world No.28, annihilated Janko Tipsarevic, Serbian world No.13, in the first round match of Shanghai Rolex Masters 2011 today, Tuesday, 11th October. Despite the disparity in ranking, the Spaniard
blistered his opponent for the fifth time in a long two hour and 3 minutes match ending up 7-6(2), 7-6(3) at the Qizhong Forest Sports City Arena, hard court.
Starting off with the match, Lopez opened up serving first and lodged away saving a breakpoint, 1-0. Serb followed up levelling the score grumping away with the second game of the set, 1-1. Serving out each other on respective
serves, the two levelled up in a highly flared up fashion at 2-2, 3-3, 4-4, and then at 5-5.
Unable to break each other even once in the set, the two finally tied up in a tiebreaker to decide the winner. With Lopez to serve out first, the 30-year-old Spaniard blistered away the first 5 points maddening the Serbian as he
smashed his racket down on the blue surface in frustration.
Swirling away with the left over 2 points, Lopez finished up the first set 7-6(2) where as the Serb was looking to tear up his own shirt out of madness.
Moving on with the second set, Tipsarevic bounced back as he served out the first game, broke the lower ranked Spaniard in the second and served out the third to go 3-0 in the lead. However, his boiling point exploded as Lopez
served out game 4 and broke the Serbian in the 5th to cut the lead to 3-2.
World no.13 did force back a winner, breaking the Spaniard in game 6, yet could not hold on to his own defence and lost the next to trail 3-4. The 30-year-old, ranked No.5 for hard hitting, levelled up as he served out the 8th game
of set 2 with a double game point win, 4-4.
Tipsarevic, unable to hold on to the tormenting pressure, hung on to his defence and led the set to a tiebreaker and served first. Hoping to level back the match scores required concentration that he had already lost. Serb won
his first point after losing the initial two of the tiebreaker, 2-1.
Lopez, on the other hand, jolted his opponent with lighting aces and super top-spins to outdo the out of control Serbian. Winning the tiebreaker, 7-3, Lopez shouted his victory and raised his fist as he bagged the second consecutive
tiebreaker set to win the fixture.
Outlasting Tipsarevic for the fifth time in a head-to-head battle, Lopez now moves onto the next round, round 2, to play the winner of the match between, Alex Bogomolov Jr. and Marcel Granollers.
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