Frederico Gil survives Yuri Schukin in second round – Palermo Challenger 2011
Frederico Gil of Portugal faced Yuri Schukin of Kazakhstan in the second round of Palermo Challenger on 5th October in Italy. Last time they met in Gstaand, Switzerland in 2010 Schukin dominated the game and managed
to secure a straight sets win with a score of 6-3 and 6-3. Gil was all fired up for the challenge to level up the head-to-head score. It was not easy for him and he had to struggle for two hours twenty-one minutes before he finally managed to enter into the
quarter-finals with a 6-7(4), 6-4, 6-2.
The veteran Schukin showed some great courage to resist Gil for a long period of time before he had to give up. Gil lost the first set after a tie-breaker. It was the longest set of the match which resulted in the fatigue for the
veteran who couldn’t recovered from it and lost the next two sets. It was a good hard fought battle for Gil. German tried his heart but couldn’t accumulate enough energy to hang on and win the game.
98th ranked, Gil, aced twice in the first set but Schukin resistance was good enough to stop him from winning the first set. First set saw the veteran winning 45 points and Gil was not too far with 41 points. First set
was competitive and both players were on top of their game. Gil was looking to level the head-to-head score whilst Schukin wanted to double his total.
Second and third set were fairly one-sided with Gil stealing all the glory. It was a tamed effort from Schukin in the second set but given his age and declining stamina it would be unfair to call it a poor show because most of
the energy was consumed in the prolonged first set. Gil aced once and thrice in the second and third set respectively and that shows the lethargic footwork from the Kazakhstani player. Gil took the match with 54% of the total points. Schukin tried his heart
out but his efforts were not good enough on the day to win him a place in the quarter-finals.
Gil will now face the eighth seed Diego Junqueira in the quarter-final of the tournament.
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