Jo-Wilfried Tsonga scuttles past Juan Martin Del Potro in round three - Internazionali BNL d'Italia 2012
World number five, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, ousted the ninth ranked Argentine, Juan Martin Del Potro, in the third round of the Internazionali BNL d'Italia, contested in Rome. He finished off the resistance of his rival in an hour and
24 minutes; registering a straight sets win 6-4, 6-1.
Surprisingly, the head-to-head scores between the two players depicted that Del Potro will edge out against the French big gun. The 10th seed Argentine had defeated Tsonga on five different occurrences and lost once
before this match. However, the psychological pressure had a little impact on the fifth seed French who showed no respect at all for the 23-year-old Argentine.
Both players bagged the first two serve games with no pressure at all and swapped breakpoints in the following two games that moved the scores to 3-3 in the opening set. Once again, there was no problem faced by both competitors
in the following serve game and the scores pushed on to 4-4.
Tsonga faced a slight trouble in holding his final serve game of the set. However, he saved the breakpoint to escape the scare. Del Potro faced a similar situation in the 10th game of the first set and despite saving
a breakpoint at the first time; he failed to repeat the heroics and handed over the set triumph to his rival.
Leading one set up, the French tennis ace started the play for the second part of the match with a thumping serve hold; smashing three back-to-back winners and coupling it with an ace to round off the first game.
Del Potro was low on confidence and that affected his game badly. He lost the opening serve game and soon witnessed a trail of three games. However, he regrouped and bagged the following serve game to decrease the trail to 1-3.
The French fifth seed continued to exert pressure on the Argentine and in the meantime held his serve to reclaim the lead of 4-1. He spotted several shortcomings in the play of his competitor and forced him to incur several errors.
The 10th seed Argentine tried to come back into the match but couldn’t perform the basics right and gifted another breakpoint to the French that sky-rocketed his trail to 1-5.
Tsonga was not going to squander such a classic opportunity to book a berth in the quarter-final of the tournament. He smashed a couple of winners and an unforced error from the Argentine at the end ended the match.
Jo-Wilfried Tsonga plays the top seed Serb, Novak Djokovic, in the battle for the spot in the last four.
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