Joao Souza stuns Mikhail Kukushkin in opening round – Open Castilla y Leon 2011 CH
A huge upset for the tennis fans at Segovia, Spain, as the top seed, Mikhail Kukushkin of Kazakhstan, crashed out of the opening round of Open Castilla y Leon at the hands of the unseeded Portuguese competitor, Joao Souza, on Wednesday afternoon.
The contest turned out to be a one-sided affair, with Souza dominating all the way to register a surprise victory in straight sets, 7-6(4), 6-2, advancing to the second round of the ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals) Challenger Tour event. Rated at number 60 in world rankings, Kukushkin failed to put up a decent performance with the racquet and got disposed off in the first round of the tournament at the hands of 201st ranked player.
The top seed Kazakh competed very well in the opening set and took it to the tie breaker round, which he lose to fall on his back foot in the matchup. Once getting the opening set in his bag, Souza never looked back in the rest of the game and raced away to victory in the second set to book a place in the next round of Open Castilla y Leon.
Kukushkin secured 34 out of 51 first serve points in the match, with the Portuguese winner following him with 30 out of 39 points en route to victory. The top seed had five break opportunities in the contest but he squandered away four of them to finish on the losing side in the end. Souza converted three out of his 10 break points and played aggressive tennis throughout to beat the top seeded Kazakh convincingly in the first round of the tournament.
The opening set witnessed a trade of serve breaks in the 9th and 10th game of the match to drag the scores to 6-6. A tie breaker came into play but Kukushkin failed to show his brilliance with the racquet in the decider, submitting the opener to his opponent at 6-7(4).
Souza took hold of the second set by nailing two consecutive serve breaks to race away to a 5-1 lead and inching closer to victory. Kukushkin frittered two break opportunities in the set and let Souza fly away with victory at 6-2, sending him in the second round of Open Castilla y Leon, where he will face Marco Chiudinelli of Switzerland, for a place in the quarter-finals. The Swiss was successful against Conor Niland of Ireland in the first round of the tournament.
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