Filippo Volandri overpowers Alessandro Giannessi to reach round two – Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters 2012
In an all-Italian contest, Filippo Volandri ousted Alessandro Giannessi, in the opening round clash of the Monte Carlo Rolex Masters. A battle of an hour and 28 minutes witnessed a tight two-setter that ended with the final scores
of 7-5, 6-3.
The score line doesn’t do justice to the inferior ranked player who deserved another shot at the second round spot in a form of a third set. He was extremely unlucky; missing the strikes from just a mere centimetre. Volandri won
quite a few points with the help of the net that also frustrated the 136th ranked Italian.
Both players registered a couple of serve holds before swapping successive breakpoints to push the scores at 4-4. Once again, serve holds were witnessed in the following two games before the superior ranked Italian broke serve
to take the lead. It was expected that Giannessi will fight back with a breakthrough but after forcing his opponent to 30:30 scores, he couldn’t win a single point and lost the set in annoying fashion.
The affect of close loss in the opening set was seen in the second battle as well. He lost the serve game at the start and was forced down to a trail of 0-2. He tried his best to fight back into the match and had his rival under
the cosh in the fourth game but wasted a couple of breakpoints that could have levelled the scores. However, Volandri somehow hung on to his serve and kept his lead intact.
Giannessi continued to thump his competitor on his serve and exerted immense pressure on Volandri in return games but wasn’t able to level the scores at any stage of the game. Finally the frustration had a better off him and he
dropped the most crucial game of the match that closed all doors of a comeback.
Filippo Volandri is schedule to take on the Kazakh contestant, Mikhail Kukushkin, who outfoxed the 15th seed German, Florian Mayer, in the first round. It was a day of upsets; earlier, Michael Llodra bowed to Fabio Fognini
and Kevin Anderson stooped to Thomaz Bellucci, to complete the hat-trick of upsets.
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