Juan Del Potro crushes Janko Tipsarevic in 2nd rubber – Davis Cup 2011 WG Semi-final: ARG vs SRB
World number 17, Juan Martin Del Potro of Argentina, put the defending champion, Team Serbia, in dire straits by winning the second singles rubber against the 13 ranked, Janko Tipsarevic, in the semi-finals of the Davis Cup World
Group.
The highly anticipated contest was staged on the indoor hard courts of the Belgrade Arena, Belgrade, Serbia, on Friday night. Del Potro proved absolutely merciless to the world number 13, Tipsarevic, driving him out of the contest
in straight sets 7-5, 6-3, 6-4, to extend Argentina’s lead by 2-0. The other Argentine contestant, David Nalbandian, took the first singles rubber for his side earlier, defeating the 16th ranked Serb, Viktor Troicki, 6-4, 4-6, 6-2, 6-3, to inflict
early damage to Team Serbia.
Del Potro took two hours and thirty one minutes of play to dispose of Tipsarevic from the contest and strengthened his team’s position in the semi-final clash. The Argentine exhibited phenomenal power hitting and gave absolutely
no chance to Tipsarevic to come on top of the game. He kept his clean record against the Serb, defeating him for a third consecutive time to lead the head-to-head series against him by 3-0.
It was the second victory for Del Potro against Tipsarevic in the current ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals) season, as he outplayed the Serb in straight sets in the final at the Delray Beach this year to win his eighth
singles title. Del Potro banged 69 per cent of his serve on target, firing 11 thudding aces to the opponent’s court. He amazingly reeled off 48 out of 56 first serve points in the game to get the better of the bewildered Serb and converted three of his 13
break opportunities en route to victory.
Tipsarevic posed some resistance earlier on in the contest but lost all his steam in the later parts of the match to let Del Potro fly away with a convincing victory. The Serb was worn out by his huge number of unforced errors,
which amounted to 51 in the contest. A total of t78 points were played in the matchup, with Del Potro securing 102 of them and Tipsarevic lagging far behind with just 76 to finish on the losing side.
Argentina leads the semi-final clash with 2-0 and require just one more won out of the three more matches to qualify for the final of the Davis Cup.
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