Grega Zemlja upsets Lukas Lacko in the opener – St. Petersburg Open 2012
Ranked 69th in the world, Grega Zemlja of Slovenia continued to make use of his top form in recent months, as he dismissed the fifth seed, Slovakia’s Lukas Lacko, in straight sets 6-3, 6-2 in the first round of the St.
Petersburg Open in Russia. The Slovenian needed an hour and eight minutes to clinch victory in an easy encounter.
Lacko drew the first blood, as he broke the Slovenian in the opening game to go up 1-0 but Zemlja responded by winning five in a row to race to a 5-1 advantage. Lacko reduced the deficit to 3-5 by pulling one back in the seventh
and holding his following serve but that was not enough, as Zemlja made the most of his second chance to triumph 6-3.
The Slovenian pounded three aces on his opponent and made only one double fault in the first set. The 25-year-old succeeded in converting 13 of the 20 first serves into points but he lost the advantage, as he dropped seven of the
10 on the second ones. The best part of Zemlja’s performance was his accurate first returns, on which he won seven of the 11 points.
Winning the opener provided more confidence to the Slovenian, as he hit a blow to his higher ranked rival in the very first game of the second set and consolidated on it to take a 2-0 lead. Zemlja nailed second breakthrough in
the seventh and capitalised on the double advantage to seal it 6-2.
The Slovenian participant hit a single ace and 50 percent of the first serves, bagging 10 of the 12 points on them. The right-hander was unable to do well on the replies to Lacko’s first deliveries this time, losing six of the
eight points on them. Zemlja did not provide any break point to the Slovakian and converted two of the three he received in the second set.
Talking to the reporters at the end of the match, he said, “It wasn’t easy. Maybe it looked easy, but I was fighting throughout the match. I was trying to win every point, every game.”
Lacko is slated to take on Italy’s 81st ranked player, Flavio Cipolla, in the second round.
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