Lukas Lacko, Andrey Golubev reach the second round draw – Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships 2012
Day one of the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships provided some high quality tennis action for the crowd at the Aviation Club Tennis Centre in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, with the top seeds making through to the second round.
World number one, Novak Djokovic and the eighth ranked American, Mardy Fish, registered comprehensive victories to clear the opening round but the Slovakian qualifier, Lukas Lacko had to labour extremely hard to make it through. The 76th ranked
Lacko edged past Sergei Bubka of Ukraine in a stiff three-setter, 2-6, 6-2, 7-6(14).
The enthralling contest took two hours and four minutes to conclude, with Lacko coming out as the deserving winner. The 24-year-old Slovakian faced six match points in the decisive set but stood strong as a wall to defend each
one of them, eventually cashing in his chance to close out the contest in his favour.
Lacko was off to a dismal start in the opening set and an aggressive beginning from the Ukrainian pushed him on his back foot early. Bubka nailed serve breaks in the fourth and eighth games to wrap up the opening set at 6-2, getting
one up in the contest.
The Slovakian qualifier came back very strongly in the following set, breaking his opponent in the third and seventh game to wrap up the proceedings. Both men stepped into the decisive set and kept straining extremely hard to take
the better of one another. A trade of serve breaks in the end dragged the set into a tie-breaker round. Bubka had six opportunities to win the match but victory barely slipped out of his fingers and Lacko grabbed it without making any mistake. The Slovenian
won the match at 7-6(14) to reach the second round of the tournament.
On the other hand, 143rd ranked Kazakh competitor, Andrey Golubev, cruised past the Serbian youngster, Marko Djokovic, in straight sets, 6-3, 6-2, to join Lacko in the second round of the tournament. He took just 71
minutes to dump the 20-year-old Djokovic in their very first meeting in singles encounters.
The Serbian underdog coughed a number of unforced errors in the match, including seven costly doubles faults. He registered just one break point in the entire matchup, while suffered four cracking ones from Golubev to finish on
the losing side in the end.
Unseeded Czech, Lukas Rosol, also won his opening round match against France’s Adrian Mannarino on Monday. He took merely 48 minutes to wrap up victory at 6-2, 6-2.
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