Philipp Petzschner sears past Greg Ouellette to qualify to the main draw – Rogers Cup 2011
In a predictable match in the final qualifying round of the Rogers Cup, third seed German Philipp Petzschner steered clear of his American opponent Greg Ouellette. The one hour twenty two minutes long match finished at 6-4, 6-4
on Sunday. Petzschner joined the tournament’s qualifier round top six seeds, except Yen-Hsun Lu, in the main draws of the fabled Rogers Cup. The Cup has garnered a venerable position as one of the best US Open Series event and its classification as a Masters
1000 event on the ATP Tour is testament to its reputation.
Coming in with a 19-16 season’s win loss standing, former World No. 35 Petzschner was certainly the top dog in the match. Despite being busy in the last few weeks with outings at Washington, Hamburg, Stuttgart and Wimbledon, the
80th ranked athlete had failed to make it past the first round of any tournament. The German had recorded his year’s best performance at his hometown event in Halle, Germany where he finished runner up to Philipp Kohlschreiber. This will be Petzschner’s
third time at the Rogers Cup; the highest he’s managed to go thus far was in 2009’s edition where he suffered a third round defeat against Rafael Nadal.
The 302nd ranked American Ouellette has solely limited himself to the challenger circuits, with exceptions being at Newport, Houston, Indian Wells and Auckland. His yearly win loss mark thus stands at 0-0. Ouellette
had previously won his opening round match in three sets at Montreal against South African Fritz Wolmarans.
Sunday’s match between the two opponents was the players’ first meeting.
Despite serving better than Petzschner, with an efficiency of 45% and winning 80% of his first serve points, Ouellette couldn’t manage to conclude the set to his benefit. The German won 100% of his first serve points closed the
set in a resounding manner by registering a breakpoint in the very last set of the game. The score board stood at 6-4 convincingly in Petzschner’s account.
The second set followed suit, with Petzschner playing the opening game. He registered a set break in only the second game of the set to take the scores to 2-0; however Ouellette fought back by breaking his opponent’s serve in the
very next game. Serving at a much improved 56%, Petzschner won 80% points of them and recorded 4 well executed aces. He again closed the set at 6-4 in his favour by breaking Ouellette again in the set’s last game.
Petzschner’s next match in the main draws of the Rogers Cup will be undoubtedly tough. The qualifier faces ninth seed Gilles Simon of France, currently ranked at No.11 on the rankings table.
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