Marsel Ilhan shines with a close win over Philipp Petzschner - International German Open 2011
The International German Tennis Championship continued with its 1st round matches today. All of the matches were played at the Rothenbaum Tennis Court at Hamburg. Playing for the first time head to head, Marsel Ilhan,
the Turkish sensation, went against the home player Philipp Petzschner in a 3 setter match to the 2nd round. The clay court was up for a great match of the event starting at 10:07 at local time.
Marsel Ilhan has been performing to his maximum previously. Out of the last 10 matches, he won 7 matches. The Scheveningen Open 2011 finalist, currently ranked as World No.117, has played all of his last 10 matches on clay. Considering
the fact, Marsel’s betting odds were less as he was the hot favourite.
On the other hand, Petzschner has been in roughed up form. Having played most of his previous matches at home, he seemed to have been a better judge of the court than his rival. The world No.78 had his advantage as he had a strong
right arm to throw his best serves and forehands from the baseline. The only disadvantage, and a big one, was that Petzschner is more of a hard court player. However it was too soon to conclude either players winning.
The match started off as both players led to theirs ends. The home favourite opened up the match and the score line 1-0. Following his rival, Ilhan won his first game for the day to level the scores to 1-1. Dominating the game
then onwards, Ilhan won his first breakpoint for the day to lead the score 2-1. Serving for game 4, Petzschner battled hard for a breakpoint but could not finish off and lost again while the Turkish extended his lead to 3-1. Intensifying as it could get for
the fans, Petzschner’s frustrations lost him another game making the scores fall against him to 4-1. The Turk International ultimately won 2 of the next 3 games to secure a 1-0 lead in the first set.
Following on to the second set, the world No.78 once again served first in the set and opened up the score board 1-0. The battle continued without any breakpoints until game 17. The German won on his serve as the scores read 5-4.
Without wasting any time he made his move and won a breakpoint against the Turk’s serve 6-4 to level the set scores 1-1.
The already exciting match got even more exciting and intensifying as ever as the deciding third set. For the third time in the match, Petzschner opened up the starting game of the set. The German took his chances at the baseline
and perfected his shots which won him the first two games including a breakpoint. Leading 2-0 the German fell off from his lead losing two games straight as the Turkish made the scores level to 2-2. Steadily both players won on their respective serves to
lock the game at every point. First at 3-3 then at 4-4 and once again at 5-5 at the end of game28, finally leading to a tiebreaker.
Proving to be a heart attack for the home fans, Marsel finally broke through the tiebreaker and a long breath taking match to win 6-2, 4-6, 7-6(5). The match went on to a total of 202 points. Ilhan won with the higher score of
103 including 68 service and 35 return points against 99 of Petzschner. The Turk smoked 8 aces in the match and only 1 double fault during the tiebreaker. The match ended in 2 hours and 17 minutes and with unhappy home fans.
Ilhan now qualifies into the 2nd round to play yet another German, Florian Mayer.
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