Florian Mayer upsets Mikhail Youzhny at Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters
27-year-old German Florian Mayer rallied past 10th seeded Russian Mikhail Youzhny in a three set thriller on Monday. He registered a 6-3, 2-6, 6-3 win over the Russian to advance to the second round
in the 2011 Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters.
World number 35 Mayer is in great shape this season as he made semi-final berth at Sydney and Zagreb and quarter-final berth at Brisbane and Dubai. He recently displayed his tremendous skills at Miami where he reached the
fourth round before entering this ATP World Tour Masters 1000 event.
The German made an unexpected win against Youzhny at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin in the match and took the lead in their head to head series by 4-3. He last met the Russian in ATP Masters event at Shanghai last year and became
victorious in three sets.
Mayer played exceptionally well in the first set and outplayed the seeded Russian through his amazing forehands from his arsenal of skills. He exchanged an early break to level the scores at 2-2 and then broke Youzhny’s serve
in the fifth game to take the lead. The German then kept his remaining serves superbly and broke the Russian’s serve again in the ninth game to clinch the set with an assuring 6-3 win in 47 minutes. He fired eight winners and registered an impressive 75 percent
win on his first serve.
14th Ranked Youzhny on the other side of net was in good shape as well. He reached the semi-final at Marseille and showed his same spark in the second set as he gave top notch performance. The 28-year-old
broke the German’s serve in the very first game and took the lead by keeping his remaining serves. He strengthened his lead by breaking Mayer’s serve again in the seventh game due to several unforced errors the German committed. Youzhny then held his serve
to win the set with a convincing 6-2 score line and took the match to the decider set.
He sealed this set in 37 minutes and looked out of sorts in the first set but geared up nicely to win the second set. The Russian converted two out of three breakpoint opportunities to his advantage and made 10 unforced errors
as compared to Mayer’s 24 to earn the equaliser.
The German kept his shaky performance in the final set and lost his serve in the very first game. However, he quickly counterattacked and snatched his break back in the following game. Mayer exchanged another break in the
next two games and kept the scores squared. He finally managed to take the lead by holding his serve in the next game and breaking Russian’s serve in the sixth game to make the score line 4-2. After exchanging another break in the next two games he edged the
Russian by breaking his serve in the ninth game and clinched the set with a 6-3 score line.
Mayer will next face Portuguese qualifier Frederico Gil who downed Ukrainian Sergiy Stakhovsky in straight sets to reach this spot.
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