Potito Starace takes down injured Martin Klizan to bag title win – San Marino Open 2011 CH
Seeded at number one in the tournament, the world number 55, Potito Starace of Italy, showed his true class to dispose of the unseeded Slovakian, Martin Klizan, in the final of San Marino CEPU Open, being played at the City of
San Marino, San Marino, on Sunday.
The one sided contest took merely 56 minutes of play, before the Slovak competitor withdrew from the second set of the contest for the reason of his agonising thigh injury to let Starace lift the ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals)
Challenger Tour event. The Italian was leading the matchup by 6-1, 3-0, when Klizan called off the matchup in the 57th minute of play.
The top seeded Italian was in a commanding position in the matchup when the game was closed in his favour in the undesirable manner. Starace absolutely blew away the Slovak in the opening set and carried on his belligerent run
in the second set before his opponent retired from the game to bestow victory upon him before time.
The curtailed version of the game witnessed complete dominance from the top seeded Italian, whose brilliant serve game propelled him to victory. Starace amazingly banged 86 per cent of his serve on target and secured 22 out of
30 first serve points en route to victory, with his opponent earning just six out of 16 points on his 44 per cent first serve in the matchup.
The contest took off with sheer aggression from the Italian, launching a series of forays upon the bewildered Slovak right at the beginning. Klizan utterly failed to crack in a single break point in the entire matchup and squandered
away three break opportunities to finish the matchup on the losing end.
After levelling the scores at 1-1, Klizan didn’t hold serve in any of his games in the rest of the match. Starace stung his first serve break of the day in the third game and then carried on the onslaught to nail two more break
point conversions to close out the first set at 6-1. The Italian successfully defended the three break points he faced from the opponent and bagged 34 out of 54 total points in the first set to get one up in the contest.
Signs of fatigue were evident from Klizan right at the beginning of the second set and the Slovak failed to pose any resistance to the aggression of Starace. The Italian nailed a serve break to lead 3-0 in the second set but Klizan
signalled to the chair umpire that he was in no position to keep on playing, letting Starace away with championship title.
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