Philipp Kohlschreiber edges past Martin Klizan in the third round – Barcelona Open Banc Sabadell 2013
World number 21, Philipp Kohlschreiber, had to go through s real rough ride in the third round battle of Barcelona Open Banc Sabadell on Friday. He struggled for two hours and 36 minutes against the 11th seed Slovakian,
Martin Klizan, before he finally wrapped up victory in three sets, 1-6, 7-6(2), 7-6(5), to reach the quarter-final draw of the ATP World Tour 500-level tournament being played in Barcelona, Spain.
The 29-year-old German was facing Klizan for the first time in his professional career and took his time to get the knowhow of his opponent’s game play. By the time Kohlschreiber got his eye in the game, he had already suffered
a breadstick in the opening set of the match. The eighth seeded German laboured extremely hard to get back to his winning ways and managed to win the following two sets in tie-break rounds to come out as the winner.
Kohlschreiber was off to a sloppy start in the opening set and couldn’t find the sweet spot of his racket. He could barely deliver 58 per cent of his first serve on the target and secured merely 8 out of 14 points on it. On the
other hand, Klizan comprehensively won 13 out of 16 points on his first serve and broke the German serve two out of three times to register a breadstick.
The eighth seeded German lifted off his game in the following set and met Klizan blow-by-blow. He didn’t drop his serve the entire time and held his serve in all games comprehensively. He won 21 out of 27 first serve points, whilst
the Slovak contender claimed 21 out of 26 of his. With both players failing to break the serve, the set ended in a tie-break and Kohlschreiber seized the vital opportunity to bag the set at 7-6(2).
The decisive set took off with an early exchange of serve breaks, followed by a regular game. Another trade of break points was seen later in the set before another tie-break round came into play. Klizan fought better in the decider
this time but Kohlschreiber repeated the results by winning the set, 7-6(5) in the end.
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