Janko Tipsarevic moves into the second round at the Sony Ericsson Open
World number 44, Serbian Janko Tipsarevic downed world number 63, Dutch Robin Haase in straight sets. The Serb earned a 6-4, 7-6(5) victory over Haase to advance to the second round at the 2011 Sony Ericsson Open on Thursday.
The 26-year-old Serb lost his last duel against Haase at the Sunrise Challenger in 2008 but now he has improved a lot and outplayed the Dutch in straight sets at the hard courts at the Tennis Center at Crandon Park.
Tipsarevic, who recently reached the final at Delray Beach before losing to Argentinean Juan Martin Del Potro, is in his top form. He displayed his tremendous skills in the match and held his serve in the first game of the opening
set.
Both players held their serves until Haase broke through Serb’s defences and converted his breakpoint opportunity to his advantage in the sixth game. After this Tipsarevic snatched his break back in the next game and won the next
three proceeding games as well.
Despite committing a double fault and having a lower first serve percentage, he registered an impressive 71 percent win on it and saved a breakpoint to clinch the opening set with a 6-4 win.
Tipsarevic carried his winning ways to the second set as he held his opening serve and later held his rest of the serves spectacularly. He found five breakpoint opportunities but he just couldn’t convert it to his advantage. However,
he earned an exceptional 90 percent win on his lower first serve share.
The hard hitting Dutchman fought back equally well. Although he committed five double faults, he smashed six ferocious aces and held his entire serves plausibly.
The match went to tiebreaker where the Serbian finally prevailed over the youngster and won the set with a score line of 7-6(5).
He will next face 18th seeded Croat Marin Cilic and he needs to focus more and practice harder to triumph over a seeded player.
Ranked 20th in the world, Cilic is in great form as he made a quarter-final berth at Rotterdam and he reached the final at Marseille before losing to the top seeded Swede Robin Soderling in troublesome three sets. He
then showed his fascinating skills at the Davis Cup where he advanced his country to the next round.
Tags: