Joao Souza loses to Filippo Volandri in the quarterfinal – BRD Nastase Tiriac Trophy 2011
Earlier in the day, world number 84 Joao Souza took on world number 86 Filippo Volandri in the quarterfinal of the BRD Nastase Tiriac Trophy 2011 at Romania, Bucharest. The Italian required just 60 minutes to upset his Brazilian
(Souza) challenger with a straight set victory of 6-2, 6-0 and by doing so, he reached the semi-final for the third time in his career.
Subsequently winning the toss, Souza cracked up the starting set but got off on the wrong side of the court. With a commanding start, Volandri broke early in the match and pressurized the Brazilian from the beginning. Winning the
first two games, the Italian again broke his challenger in the third game and took a solid lead of 3-0.
Souza pounced at the first opportunity to jump back into the game by breaking his adversary in the fourth game. The Italian was in no mood of playing around and wanted to cut the chase by breaking him back in the fifth game and
as he did so, he went two breaks at 4-1.
The Brazilian again tried to make a comeback in the sixth game by breaking his adversary and even though he achieved the difficult feat, he was unable to minimize the gap between his Italian opponent’s score and his. Furious with
his adversary, the world number 86 again bulldozed the Brazilian bloke and took away the first set winning 6-2 and led the match 1-0.
Amidst the second set, Volandri served first again to save a close breakpoint and lead the set 1-0. The Italian brass then nicked away the second game, while his opponent’s first and went on winning on his serve in the third game.
With the score at 3-0, one would’ve expected Souza to make a comeback but the Italian pinned his opponent down.
The world number 86 extended his lead to 4-0 after breaking the Brazilian for the second time in the set. Amidst the remaining two games the Italian lad had held on to his serve in the fifth game and was now looking to break the
Brazilian. With a strong back hand shot, Italian Volandri walked away with a bagel victory in the second set.
When all was said and done, Volandri had hit 80 percent of his first serves on target and had a first serve winning percentage of 61 percent against the Brazilian’s 23 percent. By breaking Souza seven times in the match, added
to 30 year-old Italian’s records.
Volandri will now be facing the second seeded Florian Mayer, who defeated Albert Ramos in the quarterfinal.
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