Juan Carlos Ferrero lifts the trophy, wins the final against Pablo Andujar – Mercedes Cup 2011
31-year-old, Juan Carlos Ferrero, surpassed his 25-year-old compatriot, Pablo Andujar in the second round of the 2011 Mercedes Cup at the TC Weissenhof Court in Stuttgart, Germany. Ferrero steamrolled Pablo in 79 minutes and 29
seconds of the match, winning 6-4,6-0.
Not meeting for the first time both the players were familiar with each other’s style and technique. They crossed swords once prior to this event; in 2007, at the Open Seat Godo tournament, Barcelona, Spain and although, Juan had
retired due to a knee injury, Pablo won the match and lead the head to head score 1-0. The Higher Power had granted Juan another chance to even out the score with his old time competitor (Pablo) at the final round of the Mercedes Cup on Sunday.
Juan serving first; had aced, served with extreme precision with no double faults and although he gave a break point to his opponents advantage, he still had a walloping seventy five percent first serve win along with a mediocre
first return (winning only forty two percent) and was also able to win sixty seven percent of his break points. Pablo, on the other hand won, an average fifty eight percent of his first serve points and his first return was almost half of that of Ferrero’s.
The crowd was in frenzy and couldn’t stop cheering for the elder Espanola. Summing it up; Ferrero won fifty five percent of his total set points where as his compatriot only managed to win twenty seven points out of a total of sixty and hence, won the set
6-4
After taking a thrashing in the first set, one would have expected the younger Espanola to jump right back in the game. However, that was a utopian dream for his fans and himself; instead he was put to shame by Juan. Andujar serving
first; smashed zero aces and had very poor accuracy in his serve striking four double shots out of which three hit the net and the other was a line fault. This time 31-year-old pounded the younger Spaniard, the second set saw Juan smash two aces, have extreme
precision and serve zero double faults, with an excellent serve he won a grand seventy eight percent of his first serve points along with fifty percent win in first return points where as his opponent won a fifty percent of his first serve points and had a
very disappointing return game only winning a mere twenty two percent in the first return.
In spite of losing the first set, in the second set it was as if he didn’t even try! the overall set saw Pablo; strike four double faults (both hitting the net), win only ten out of twenty seven total serve points in the set along
with only a pathetic five out of seventeen in total set return points and a total set win of only fifteen out of forty four points. While his rival, the older Spaniard had twice as many points in the total set points (which were twenty nine out of forty four)
and in addition, Pablo gave seven break points out of which Juan won three to his advantage. Hence, he had an easy victory of 6-0.
Despite the age factor both the sets were largely dominated by Juan’s presence on the court; overall, Juan had smashed three aces, won sixty seven percent of his total service points along with fifty four percent of total return
points and hence achieved a total of a sixty two points out of a hundred and four.
Winning the tournament was a piece of cake for the world number sixty four, Juan Carlos Ferrero; he managed to win all his games with excellent serve and return games, winning any opportunity that came his way, he then drove off
with a white Mercedes SLK-350 and a check of Euro 68,850/-.
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