Horacio Zeballos crushes Thomas Fabbiano to advance into semi-final – AON Open 2011 CH
Argentine tennis pro Horacio Zeballos thrashed out Thomas Fabbiano of Italy 6-3, 6-1 on Friday to book his place in the semi-final of 2011 AON Open Challengers tournament here on the clay courts of Genoa, Italy.
Zeballos made a few unforced early on but as the match progressed, he raised his game to a higher level and did not allow his opponent to have a sniff. Looking very confident on his serve games, the Argentine claimed more than
73 per cent of the points on his own serve. He then dominated serve return department of the game with an impressive 49 per cent share of the points on Fabbiano’s serve.
Seeded ninth at the Association of Tennis Professionals tournament, Zeballos made an emphatic start to the match as he broke his opponent in the very first game of the opening set. Placing his superb forehand and backhand winners
to perfection, he put the challenger under extreme pressure. Executing the drop shot very effectively, he surprised his rival every now and then to earn cheap points.
Breaking his opponent twice, he raced to an impassable 5-2 lead and he needed only to hold on to his next service game to close out the set. Claiming four straight points on his serve at 5-3, he pocketed the opener to take the
set score lead 1-0.
The second set followed a pretty similar trend with Zeballos asserting his dominance over his opponent in almost all aspects of the game. However his serve proved to be the main difference between the two players. The Argentine
denied his opponent any chance of breaking the serve as he faced no break points throughout the contest.
Breaking serve twice more in the second set, he took complete control of the situation. Leading the game score 5-1, he fired a powerful ace to set up two match points for himself which he converted the with a brilliant passing
shot to wrap up the match that lasted for only 1 hour and 33 minutes.
Zeballos was delighted with his performance and he aimed to put up a similar show in the semi-final as well. His opponent there will be Leonardo Mayer, who upset Rui Machado to reach that far.
Fabbiano on the other hand was disappointed with his effort. He r=lacked the firepower in certain areas of the game as well as he paid the heavy price for too many unforced errors.
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