Fillippo Volandri and Lukas Rosol march into the semifinals at the 2011 Barletta Open
Fillippo Volandri battled past Jaroslav Pospisil of Czech Republic 6-7, 7-6, 6-1 on Friday to reach the semifinals of 2011 Barletta Open in Italy.
Volandri started the first set tentatively. He over hit the ball on several occasions as his shots landed outside the lines. The Italian had a wonderful chance to break the serve in the second game of the set but wasted his
opportunity with careless shots. Although Volandri played better tennis afterwards to take the set into the tie breaker, he couldn’t stop his opponent from earning a well deserved set lead 1-0.
The second set also followed a similar pattern. Both players fought hard for every available point and got involved in several long rallies. Neither was able to break their opponent’s serve forcing the set into a tiebreaker.
Volandri snatched four straight points in the tie-breaker to take the match into the final set.
The Italian raised the level of his game in the decider and broke the serve on three occasions to prevail in battle that lasted for about 3 hours and 19 minutes. The Italian executed his shots to perfection to put his opponent
under extreme pressure. On the other hand, Pospisil failed to handle the heat and collapsed dramatically.
Ranked 80th in the world, Volandri’s serve was his real asset as he won four crucial points with serve aces. He dominated the challenger in the return department as well securing nearly 50 percent
of the points. The 29 year old expressed his delight at his sensational victory and aimed for a stronger performance in his semifinal clash against Andreas Haider-Maurer of Austria. Haider-Maurer defeated Thomas Schoorel 6-3, 6-2.
In the second quarterfinal of the day, Czech Lukas Rosol eased past the Italian Simone Vagnozzi 6-2, 7-5 to book his place in the last four at the US $ 42,000 Barletta Challengers.
Rosol started off aggressively and broke the serve in the very first game of the match. He dominated his opponent and lost only a couple of games to take the opening set 6-2.
Rosol made his third serve break of the set to seal the match in two sets. The Czech required only 1 hour and 58 minutes to oust his opponent from the event.
The Czech reached his career high ATP ranking of world number 131 just a couple of weeks and is in pursuit of his first Challenger Tour title. He will take on Aljaz Bedene of Slovenia in the semifinal who thrashed Alessio
Di Mauro 6-0, 4-6, 6-3.
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