Kevin Anderson rallies past Jarkko Nieminen in the opening round – Swiss Indoors Basel 2012
World number 39, Kevin Anderson, kept his clean sheet against the unseeded Finn contender, Jarkko Nieminen, in the opening round of the Swiss indoors Basel tournament on Tuesday. The crafty South African took merely one hour and
25 minutes to wrap up his victory in straight sets, 7-6(4), 6-3, to reach the pre-quarter-final rounds of the ATP World Tour 500 event in Basel, Switzerland.
It was a competitive battle in the opening half of the contest but things seemed quite one-sided in the second set. Nieminen posted a solid resistance in opener and dragged his opponent into the tie-break, eventually losing the
decider to fall 0-1 in the match. Anderson took charge of the momentum in the following set and went out all guns blazing, belting his opponent to all parts of the tennis court. His forehand worked perfectly for him and he kept on delivering assertive winners
on regularity, forcing his Finn rival to submit in the second set of the match.
Anderson delivered 65 per cent of his first serve on target and bombarded nine thudding aces on his opponent’s court. He skilfully claimed 27 out of 37 first serve points and snatched 38 out of 79 return points on his opponent’s
serves. His Finn counterpart also won the same number of first serve points in the match but the vital difference proved to be the break point conversions from both sides. Nieminen nailed three out of four serve breaks, whilst the South African winner converted
five out of 11 break opportunities to take the better of his opponent.
It was the third battle between these two contestants and Anderson has been victorious in all of their meetings. He recently outplayed Nieminen in the round of 64 at the Shanghai Rolex Masters, 6-2, 7-6(4), and carried on the similar
impetus in Tuesday’s matchup as well. He now leads 3-0 in the head-to-head series.
For qualifying to the quarter-final rounds of Swiss Indoors Basel, Anderson will either face the seventh seeded German contender, Florian Mayer, or unseeded Marinko Matosevic from Australia. These two will compete in the opening
round clash on Wednesday.
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