Nicolas Almagro rallies past Ivo Minar into the quarter-finals – SkiStar Swedish Open 2012
Second seeded Spanish player, Nicolas Almagro, bounced back from the jaws of defeat to outlast Czech Republic’s Ivo Minar in three sets 1-6, 6-7(8), 6-4 in the second round at the SkiStar Swedish Open in Bastad, Sweden on Thursday. Almagro
needed an hour and 55 minutes to battle past his opponent in a closely contested match.
The Spaniard and Minar started by holding their serve in the opening two games to level the score at 1-1. The Czech player fully dominated the proceedings after that, as he did not allow his higher ranked opponent to claim even
a single game, snatching five back to back to win 6-1.
Minar banged in two aces and committed one double fault in the opener, maintaining a first serve percentage of 58 and clinching 12 of the 15 points on them. The Czech contestant fared pretty badly on the second deliveries, as he
lost six of the 11 points on them but balanced that by pocketing nine of the 12 second return points.
In the second set, both players broke each other once to take the score to 6-6 and force a tie-breaker. Almagro faced a match point at 5-6 but saved it and then went on to win 7-6(8).
The Spaniard bombarded six aces and 70 percent of the first serves, converting 23 of the 28 of them into points. Both players failed in saving the only break point they faced in the second set.
The decider was begun steadily by Almagro and Minar, as they did not drop their serve in the first nine games and took the score to 5-4 in favour of the former. The Spaniard struck at that moment and captured it 6-4.
Almagro could not match the level of his first set’s brilliance on serve but still he fired two aces and claimed 11 of the 13 first serve points in the final set. This time, he also gave an impressive performance on the second
ones, as he bagged nine of the 12 points.
The Spaniard is drawn to play the world number 106, Daniel Gimeno-Traver, in the last eight.
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