Jurgen Melzer defeats Daniel Gimeno-Traver in 3rd round – German Tennis Championships 2011
Jurgen Melzer joined the top seeds of the bet-at-home Open German Tennis Championships 2011 in the third round of the tournament. Second seed Melzer, from Austria, trounced on his Spanish opponent Daniel Gimeno-Traver to win the
match in a three set 6-3, 5-7, 6-1deal. Earlier that day top seed Gael Monfils brushed aside Spanish qualifier Albert Ramos to join third seed Nicolas Almagro in the third round at Hamburg. Almagro had won his conquest against lucky loser Lukas Rosol.
Currently ranked at No. 12, Melzer bounced back from his rather dismal performance in Stuttgart where he lost the opener. He was the runner up in Hamburg last year. The Austrian had a great start to the season with some outstanding
performances on the clay courts in Monte Carlo, where he reached the semis and in the quarterfinals at Barcelona. However since then he had failed to win more than one match in any tournament.
World No. 69 Gimeno-Traver had been lucky early on in the tournament. His opponent Marcel Granollers had retired in their first match giving Gimeno-Traver a free ticket to the next round. Melzer and Gimeno-Traver’s head to head
rankings now stand at 3-1 with the Austrian leading head-on.
Gimeno-Traver played the opening game of the first set but lost it to Melzer, who won by limiting Traver to just 15 points. Play progressed with both the players performing at par with each other and the score tied at 3-3 on the
sixth game. Melzer then torpedoed through by registering two blistering serve breaks in games 7 and 9, successfully securing an unbreakable lead. Melzer saved the only breakpoint he faced but his struggling opponent could not even contain one of the two that
Melzer setup against him. The first set easily went to Melzer 6-3.
Traver made an appreciable effort at a comeback in the second set, winning it 5-7 but was unable to sustain his new found strength through to the third set. The second set quickly built up to the 2-2 mark and the next few games
saw an intense volley of breakpoints, two each by both the players to raise the score board to the 4-4 level. The set remained as fiercely contested till the very end but Traver surprisingly secured a vital breakpoint, ending the set 7-5 in his favour.
The tiring one hour and fifty minutes finally ended with Melzer bouncing back to secure an effortless win in the third set. Serving at an astounding 86%, Melzer won 15 of the 18 serve points and did not face even a single breakpoint
situation. Taking advantage, Melzer whitewashed Traver with two breakpoints and won the set by a huge margin at 6-1.
Melzer will play his quarter final match against Italian Fabio Fognini. The 15thseed Fognini had easily routed qualifier Victor Crivoi in their second round match.
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