Marcel Granollers stuns Michael Llodra to advance at Sony Ericsson Open
24-year-old Spanish Marcel Granollers upset 23rd seeded French Michael Llodra in a 7-5, 3-6, 7-5 thriller mach on Sunday. The unseeded Spaniard now has advanced to the pre quarters at the 2011 Sony Ericsson Open in Miami.
Ranked 55th in the world, Granollers hasn’t had much progress this season so far. He was ousted in the first rounds at the BNP Paribas Open, ABN AMRO World Tennis Tournament, PBZ Zagreb Indoors and Australian Open but
in this event he is in great shape. Granollers overpowered German Benjamin Becker and upset 12th seeded Swiss Stanislas Wawrinka in three sets in the first two rounds.
Facing another seed in this ATP World tour 1000 event, Granollers convincingly dumped the Frenchman on his first ever meeting by a three setter mouth watering match to advance to the fourth round.
Both players displayed tremendous skills in the opening set and held their serves until they levelled at 2-2. In the fifth game, the 24-year-old Spaniard broke Llodra’s serve and took the lead to make the score 3-2. The Frenchman
quickly counterattacked and snatched the break back when Granollers shot a haphazard lob long. In later matches, both levelled each other out until Granollers converted another breakpoint to his advantage and held his serve in the proceeding game to clinch
the set with a 7-5 win.
In the second set, Llodra made a comeback in the game as he put his entire concentration in the match. He held his serve in the first game convincingly through his massive forehands. Though Llodra double faulted twice, he saved
all the three breakpoints and found six breakpoint opportunities. The higher ranked French finally converted his breakpoint opportunity in the sixth game and then held his serves in the later games to win the equalizer set with a 6-3 score line.
Both players moved into the third set in full of confidence and held their opening serves. Llodra made the first move as he broke the Spaniard’s serve in the third game to take the lead by 2-1. Granollers quickly broke back in
the very next game and levelled the scores 2-2. The match got more interesting as the Frenchman broke Granollers serve again in the fifth game. He then held his serves in the proceeding games until he took the lead and made the score 5-4. After this, the Spaniard
roared back and broke the Frenchman’s serve to level the scores at 5-5. He then kept his savage mode on and held his serve in the proceeding game and finally clinched the set with another break of serve in the 12th game.
Granollers was better throughout the match as he smashed six aces and found twenty breakpoint opportunities. He registered an impressive 71 percent win on his lower first serve share and converted five of the breakpoint opportunities
to his advantage.
He will next face 6th seeded compatriot David Ferrer who downed Indian Somdev Devvarman in straight sets to reach this spot. Granollers can overcome another seed if he plays with his current form.
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