Jurgen Melzer surges to the quarterfinal; defeats Fabio Fognini – German Tennis Championships 2011
Second seed Austrian Jurgen Melzer won his third round match against fifteenth seed Fabio Fognini in a swiftly executed two set match, without even breaking a sweat. Melzer dismissed his opponent with the score board standing
at 6-2, 6-3 at the end of seventy one minutes of play. He is now securely berthed in the quarter finals of the bet-at-home Open German Tennis Championships 2011 and will be looking to avenge his last year’s lost final at Hamburg.
World No. 12 Melzer has been performing near the very top in his doubles games and only recently bagged the Stuttgart title with his partner Philipp Petzschner but they failed to even move past their first match
in Hamburg this week. However this dismissal gave Melzer an opportunity to invigorate and revitalize his singles performance, which had been on a downhill slide since the season’s beginning and to avenge his last year’s lost final against Andrey Golubev. Melzer’s
win against ace Roger Federer this year at Monte-Carlo and his performance on Thursday are testament to the fact that he has what it takes to fight on.
Fognini, ranked 38th is a feisty player without doubt and usually has a number of tricks up his sleeve. But sadly these tricks didn’t work for him and he had to bow out of the tournament. The Italian had earlier eased
past qualifier Victor Crivoi in their third round match. Melzer and Fognini had met once before in Auckland 2010, with Melzer winning 5-7, 6-3, 6-2.
The one sided match opened with Fognini serving the set’s first game. Melzer registered a crushing serve break in that first game and setting the tone for the match, took a lead 1-0. The set progressed pretty much in the
same manner with Fognini winning the third game. Fognini’s serve was again broken with the score at 4-1 and from then onwards he completely capitulated completely to the much better display of skills by Melzer. The struggling Fognini committed 2 criminally
disastrous double faults and the set easily went to Melzer 6-2.
Continuing in his unmatched form, Melzer once again broke Fognini in the first game of the second set. Fognini fared only slightly better this time around and conceded the set 6-3 to his opponent. Melzer served at 71%
and won 12 of his 17 serve points. Fognini meanwhile managed to save only 50% of his breakpoints and Melzer recorded his second break of serve later in the game. Melzer easily win the match without even facing a single breakpoint situation, which speaks volumes
about Fognini’s dismal performance.
Melzer now meets eighth seed Italian Fernando Verdasco in their quarter finals match. Verdasco had earlier come through his third round match against wild card Cedrik-Marcel Stebe.
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