Lukasz Kubot and Oliver Marach finish strong
Lukasz Kubot and Oliver Marach defeated Group B winners, and second seeded Daniel Nestor and Nenad Zimonjic 6-0, 1-6, 10-6 in just over an hour on Friday November 26 at the Barclays
ATP World Tour Finals in London.
Kubot and Marach earned their first victory in the tournament and finished with a 1-2 record. This was not enough to see them through to the semi-finals.
Zimonjic and Nestor, who were already assured a semi-final spot on Wednesday November 24, won just six points on serve in the first set, while failing to convert two break point
opportunities. They regrouped for the second set, opening with an early break of serve to take a 3-0 lead, to eventually win the set 6-1, dropping only nine points.
In the match tie-break, Kubot and Marach reeled off five straight points from 4-4, recovering from an early mini break, winning the tie-break at 10-6 to earn their first win of
the tournament.
"We knew we could not qualify for the semi-finals, but before we got onto court we said we wanted to finish on a high," Kubot remarked on the match.
"Even though it was the last match of the season we wanted to perform well against the World No. 2 team. We wanted to leave with our heads held high and as we won this will help
us for our preparations for next season."
Zimonjic expressed disappointment after the match on his and his partner's performance against Kubot and Marach.
"We got off to a slow start and made a lot of errors," said Zimonjic. "They played very well, but on the key points we made too many mistakes and paid the price.
Still Zimonjic remained hopeful on his chances of winning the tournament, stating, "Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve been playing well and we hope that we can regain our top
form and win two more matches to complete the week."
Nestor and Zimonjic are set to square off against their rivals, the first seeded team and world number ones, Mike and Bob Bryan in the semi-finals.
In the other doubles match, the third seeded Mahesh Bhupathi and Max Mirnyi defeated the seventh seeded Wesley Moodie and d**k Norman in straight-sets to earn their spot in the
semi-finals. Bhupathi and Mirnyi are set to play Mariusz Fyrstenberg and Marcin Matkowski for a spot in the finals. Fyrstenberg and Matkowski were the only undefeated doubles tandem in the round-robin stage.
Both semi-finals will take place on Saturday November 27th, with the final set for Sunday November 28th.
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