Nicolas Mahut takes down Simone Bolelli in final qualifier round – Valencia Open 2011
Sunday, 30th October continued with Frenchman, Nicolas Mahut, ranked world No.103, playing his final qualifier match against lower ranked Italian Simone Bolelli, world No.126, and beating him down in a fiery 3 setter
match 6-7(9), 6-4, 7-5 taking almost 3 hours to finish up the match.
Playing at hard indoor courts at Ciutat de les Arts I les Ciències, Valencia, Spain, the French 29-year-old had to pull out his best forms to beat down the hard hitting Italian. Anyhow, with the two making it into the hard indoor
circuit, Bolelli opened up the match serving first.
Serving out game one, Bolelli rolled down the scoreboard, 1-0. Following with a winner, the Italian pulled out his opening serve of the match and levelled up the scores at 1-1. Flaring up the match the two competitors broke each
other in the next 4 games, one after the other and levelled up again at 3-3.
Unable to break again, the set went into a tiebreaker with the Italian taking over the first serve. Dominating through the tiebreaker, world No.126 took out the first set winning the long and hard tiebreaker, 11-9, and the set,
7-6(9) to lead the match.
Continuing with set two, Mahut continued as he served out the second set opener, 1-0, however the Italian levelled up right away. Serving out game three, Mahut broke the lower ranked Italian in game 4 winning away a double breakpoint
game and taking the lead, 3-1.
Cutting down the lead, Bolelli could only win his service games and could not break back any soon, 3-2. Maintaining his lead, Frenchman kept on bagging games, and led to win the set 6-4 to level up the match scores, 1-1.
Moving onto the decider game, the French world No.103 once again served first and led the game from the front, 1-0. Equalling the scores next, Bolelli bagged his first win of the set, 1-1, switching the serve back to the higher
ranked rival.
Winning away game on respective serves both levelled up at 2-2, 3-3, 4-4 and then on 5-5 before the table turned for the Italian. Mahut, served out game 11 to lead the set, 6-5, and broke the 26-year-old in game 12 to finish off
with the set winning, 7-5, and the match with a staggering comeback and into the main draw of the ATP World Tour 500 event.
Through into the main draws, Nicolas Mahut now plays Spaniard, Guillermo Garcia, to battle it out for the 2nd round seat of Valencia Open 500. Frenchman, however, is surely capable of beating the Spaniard as he did back
in 2006. Since then the two are going to play head-to-head for the second time and looking at the stats, Mahut is has a better possibility to win the fixture.
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