Pavol Cervenak enjoys his seat in the 3rd round; beats the Monfils “killer” – Mercedes Cup 2011
The Mercedes cup 2011 looked more of a made up event as most of the top shots were knocked out in the 1st and 2nd stage matches. Another case in point presented itself when Victor Hanescu played his match
of the second round against the Slovak Pavol Cervenak. Standing at world No. 287, no one thought that the 24-year-old low ranked player would send a top listed Romanian back to his locker room in bitter pain. The match was played on clay at the TC Weissenhof
Court, Stuttgart, Germany.
The 24-year-old Slovak has previously played three matches against the Romanian World No. 64. Previously the Romanian, ranked world No. 26 in July 2009, won both fixtures against the Slovak. Astonishingly both matches went to tiebreakers.
Though Cervenak lost, the scores spoke volumes about his performance.
The 2nd round match of the Mercedes Cup was the third match between the two. Surprising as ever, Pavol managed to avenge his previous loses with a 6-3, 7-6(6) win over the Romanian international. As shocking as it may
seem, Pavol gave the huge Romanian trouble. Hanescu seemed as an old dull star as the young Slovak improved his ranking and made a jump to the third round on the Mercedes Cup.
The match started off with Cervenak opening the match as the score card. The match went steadily until Cervenak won a breaker on the Romanians serve and led the game 3-1. The low ranked Slovak then again won on his serve to make
the score 4-1 and made himself comfortable as he went on winning the set in game 9.
Hanescu’s frustrations rose to a max when he gave a breakpoint in the first game of set 2. However, Cervenak did the same and levelled the scores to 1-1. The match went on super steady as none of the players won anymore breakpoints
in the match that led to a tiebreaker. Time in the event for Hanescu the “Monfils killer” was up as the world No. 287 swirled his way to a sweet victory.
Statistically, Hanescu lost because he failed to win sufficient receiving points and also could not win more than 2 breakpoints out of the 6. However, Pavol converted 3 out of 4 breakpoints. At the end Pavol won the fixture with
a total of 74 points to 60 of Hanescu to take a ride of the 3rd round of the Mercedes Cup 2011.
Cervenak will face his worst nightmare, the Argentine Federico Del Bonis in the 3rd round of the Tour.
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