Pablo Galdon breezes past Tiago Fernandes into main draw - Sao Leopoldo Challenger 2011
Seventh seeded Brazilian, Tiago Fernandes, locked horns with the Argentine top seed, Pablo Galdon, in the last qualifying round in the Sao Leopoldo Challenger tournament, contested in Brazil, on Sunday October 30th. It was the first battle between the two individuals and lasted an hour and eighteen-minutes; it finished with a final score 6-3, 6-3 in favour of the top seed and placed a berth on the main round draw of the tournament.
Brazilian was in dismal run of form and had just won two of his last nine games. He was up against the top seed that already shined in the BVA Open challenger tournament and was hot favourite to win this match. It was a difficult task at the hands of the Brazilian; even though, he had local support with him, he couldn’t make a strong impact and lost the match.
Galdon started off as expected and struck two back to back aces in the second game and levelled the score with 1-1. He broke in the next and pushed the score to 3-1 in the next game. The initial lead proved helpful and Fernandes couldn’t recover from there.
18-year-old Brazilian needed to break to bring the score on level terms but instead his opponent broke his serve again and sealed the first set win. It was a pretty tamed performance by the teenager who couldn’t settle into the scenario and was totally outshined by his opponent.
Both players maintained a decent second serve rate but the major difference was in their first serves and the teenager only converted 61% of them in his favour whilst his opponent bagged 83% first serves points.
Total points played were sixty-two and they were shared in the ratio of 35:27 in favour of Galdon. It was a really disappointing effort from the local boy and crowd was completely dejected. It required a complete turnaround in the performance of the teenager to make any sort of impact in the match.
Impressive start in the second set by the teenager delighted the crowd; he enforced a double-fault from his opponent and broke his serve, struck an ace in the next game to take the 2-0 lead upfront but his comeback was short lived.
Argentine top seed bounced back and broke in succession that helped him to win four games in a row; it silenced the crowd completely and some of them started moving towards exits as their local boy’s defeat was inevitable.
Both players held on to their serves in the next three games and another miserable match for the teenager came to an end. Top seed clinched 55% of the total points and marched into the main rounds of the tournament.
Pablo Galdon squares-off against the third seed Portuguese, Frederico Gil in the first round of the tournament.
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