Jarkko Nieminen defeats Igor Kunitsyn in 2nd round – Legg Mason Tennis Classic 2011
Sixteenth seed Finn Jarkko Nieminen ousted his Russian opponent Igor Kunitsyn 7-5, 6-4 in their second round match at the Legg Mason Tennis Classic, Washington D.C. Of the four seeded players in action on Tuesday’s order of play,
three of them progressed to the next round. Eighth seed David Nalbandian, the defending champion was the only seeded player to face a debacle. The Washington event is a renowned warm up event for the Grand Slam at Flushing Meadows, which begins later in August.
The two players haven’t met before on the tennis courts and hence didn’t have an intimate feel for each other’s game. But Nieminen dominated trough out the one and a half hour game, faltering only fleetingly in the first set.
The 30 year old Nieminen, currently at No. 51 came into the tournament with a win-loss standing of 12-16 but the Finnish hasn’t been able to get past a maximum of third round in any ATP tournament this season. He’s played at Hamburg
and Gstaad in July before coming to Washington, managing to reach the third and second rounds respectively. Nieminen was a quarterfinalist in 2002’s edition of the Legg Mason where he lost to Thailand’s Paradorn Srichaphan.
World No. 58 and a year younger than his opponent, Kunitsyn was a quarterfinalist in Los Angeles. He lost his quarter final match to top American Mardy Fish 2-6, 4-6. He maintains a season’s win loss mark of 11-13.
The first set saw a frenzy of breakpoints as a total of 5 breakpoints were registered, raising the excitement level of the match a notch higher. Nieminen broke his opponent’s serve in the very first set, but Kunitsyn fought back
by breaking the Finish’s serve in the very next game to level the score line at 1-1. Another such exchange of breakpoints was witnessed in games 6 and 7 of the set, with both the players remaining within fighting distance of each other. Both the players grabbed
three aces each but Kunitsyn offset his by committing three disastrous double faults. Nieminen finally powered through the set by registering a serve break in its second last game and won 7-5.
Nieminen’s serving accuracy improved in the second set to 77% and he left propelled ahead with an unchallengeable lead. With scores levelled at 2-2, the Finnish player broke Kunitsyn’s serve for the only time in this set. However
with Kunitsyn struggling to connect only 45% of his serves, the Russian easily gave way to Nieminen who sealed the set with relative ease at 6-4.
Nieminen’s third round match at the tournament should prove to be relatively easy for the sixteenth seed as he faces the winner of the match between American Lucky Loser Wayne Odesnik and Radek Stepanek.
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