Ivan Dodig bounces over Guillermo Garcia-Lopez to reach the second round – PBZ Zagreb Indoors 2012
Defending champion, Ivan Dodig, put up a solid display of tennis to outclass the Spanish star, Guillermo Garcia-Lopez, in a three set nail biter at the PBZ Zagreb Indoors 2012 on Thursday. He registered a 4-6, 6-4, 6-4 victory over the La Roda native to
advance into the quarter-finals at this indoor hard court tournament taking place after the first Grand Slam, Australian Open.
The fourth seed required two hours and 37-minutes to overwhelm resilience posed by the Spaniard in their second meeting. The contestants previously met each other at this ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals) World Tour 250 series event last year and
after triumphing over Garcia-Lopez, the Croat extended lead in their FedEx ATP head2head series by 2-0.
World number 77, Garcia-Lopez made quick in-roads despite suffering the first blow. He lost his serve in the opening game of the match but rebounded in the fourth game and snatched his break back. Later, the Spaniard stayed on track and after capitalising
on another break chance in the last game, he bagged the opener with a 6-4 win.
The frustrated seed redeployed his strategy in the following set and managed to break Garcia-Lopez’s serve in the opening game. He maintained consistency in his game and plucked in remaining serves to pull out the equaliser by winning six games to four.
Currently ranked 38th in the South African Airways ATP World rankings, Dodig maintained his intensity in the final set and stayed in course to bid for the $416,000 prize money. He quickly took a 5-2 lead with two breaks of serve. In spite of losing
his serve in the eighth game, Dodig held his serve once more and clinched the decider with a 6-4 score line.
On the whole, Dodig hammered 12 aces to dominate in the match. He clobbered a lower first serve share of 58 percent as opposed to the Spaniard’s 72 percent but amazingly marked 41 out of 59 points on it. The Croat converted four out of eleven break chances
to his advantage and ended the match with 95 points.
Next in line for the 27-year-old Croat is the sixth seed, Marcos Baghdatis, who dumped the Polish challenger, Lukasz Kubot, in straight sets to book this spot.
Dutch number one, Robin Haase, will accompany Dodig in the last eight. He battled past the high spirited German, Matthias Bachinger, in a three set nail-biter to secure this place. Haase spilled more unforced errors but broke the German’s serve four times
to register a 7-6(4), 3-6, 6-3 score line in almost two hours.
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