Guillermo Garcia-Lopez downs Ruben Ramirez Hidalgo in round one – Mercedes Cup 2012
In all-Spanish affair, Guillermo Garcia-Lopez outsmarted his compatriot, Ruben Ramirez Hidalgo, in straight sets at the Mercedes Cup 2012 on Monday. He nudged up a 6-2, 6-3 victory against the world number 83 to book a spot in the round of 16 at this ATP
(Association of Tennis Professionals) World Tour 250 series event taking place in Stuttgart, Germany.
Garcia-Lopez got the better of his fellow citizen after displaying superb tennis skills and agility at this clay court tournament. He required almost one and a half hour to overpower Ramirez Hidalgo and to take lead in their FedEx ATP Head 2 Head series
by 1-0.
The 29-year-old convincingly entered the Tennis Club Weissenhof and ruled throughout the opening set. After Ramirez Hidalgo held his serve in the opening game, the winning Spaniard wiped out the following five games in a row and leaped to a 5-1 lead. He
then held his serve once more and pulled out the opener with a 6-2 win.
Ranked 87th in the South African Airways ATP World Tour Rankings, Garcia-Lopez kept momentum rolling into the following set and earned the critical break in the opening game to take the initial lead. Despite squandering his edge in the very next
game, the lower ranked Spaniard broke his opponent’s serve once more and went 4-2 up. Garcia-Lopez maintained his intensity and bagged the last two games to click the set by winning six games to three.
All in all, Garcia-Lopez clobbered a slightly lower first serve share of 56 per cent as opposed to his rival’s 57 per cent but brilliantly marked 22 out of 29 points on it. He warded off three out of four breakpoints he came across and converted five out
of nine break chances to register this victory.
Next challenge for Garcia-Lopez is his fourth seeded compatriot, Pablo Andujar, who received a bye into the second round after being the top four player of the tournament.
The sixth seed, Nikolay Davydenko, faced a bitter fate later that day. He crashed out to the local wildcard entrant, Dustin Brown, in their second meeting. Davydenko spilled fewer errors and clobbered a better first serve share, however, he lost his serve
four times before suffering a 5-7, 6-3, 6-7(7) loss.
The Russian seed squandered a match point in the final set and dragged it to the tie-breaker. However, he failed to dominate in it, eventually exiting from the tournament with disappointment.
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