Jimmy Wang overcomes Ivo Karlovic to reach the second round – US Open 2012
Chinese Taipei’s qualifier, Jimmy Wang, withstood a barrage of aces from the former world number 14, Ivo Karlovic of Croatia, to beat him in four sets 7-6(4), 6-7(8), 6-1, 6-4 in the first round of US Open on Tuesday.
The 27-year-old, Wang, is ranked 182nd in the world and he toppled Romania’s Marius Copil after getting back from a deficit of one set two days back to reach this stage. This was his first main draw win at the Flushing
Meadows, as he had lost his opening matches in his two previous appearances here in 2006 and 07.
Coming back to the latest match, both players gave each other a tough time on serve. Karlovic is famous for his big deliveries but Wang did not leave behind and responded is the same manner.
In the first set, none of the two players allowed the other to earn a breakthrough, levelling the score at 6-6 and taking it to a tie-breaker. Karlovic took a 3-1 lead at its start but then Wang won six of the following seven points
and captured it 7-6(4).
The proceedings in the second set were not much different from the previous one, as both players kept on holding their serve till the end and taking the score to 6-6 to a force a tie-breaker. This time, there was an intense fight,
with both players going neck to neck in the first 16 points and evening it out at 8-8. However, Karlovic stepped forward at that moment and grabbed a couple of them back to back to win 7-6(8).
Wang did not surrender and raised the standard of his game in the third set. The Taiwanese participant allowed Karlovic to claim only one game till the end, sealing it 6-1.
Fourth set was competitive as compared to the third one but Wang still managed to break his Croatian rival once and capitalised on that to triumph 6-4.
The Taiwanese needed three hours and three minutes to complete this upset win.
Wang lost a lot of time between 2007 and 2010 due to the wrist injury he had back then. He said, “I think the toughest part [was that I] wasted a year finding a diagnosis after the first surgery. My goal is to try to be [in the]
top 100 and better than my [previous] best. I think that’s the key to my motivation, why I kept going…I didn’t want to quit because of my injury.”
The Taiwanese has a tough road ahead, as he will face the 16th seed, Gilles Simon, in the round of 64.
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