Radek Stepanek plonks Juan Ignacio Chela in the opening round - Internazionali BNL d'Italia 2012
Czech tennis ace, Radek Stepanek, ousted the fellow Argentine veteran, Juan Ignacio Chela, in the opening round of the Internazionali BNL d'Italia on Monday. The three-setter, 2-6, 6-0, 6-3, fell in favour of the Czech who bounced
a set down to plonk the Argentine.
Chela defeated Stepanek in the first round of the Medibank International at Sydney last year and this was the first head-to-head match after that encounter. So, the 33-year-old Czech took the revenge of the last year’s defeat and
more importantly advanced to the next round of the tournament.
The Czech lost the opening serve game and went down to a trail of 2-4 in quick time. He dropped another serve game and wasted three breakpoints on the trot in the final game of the opening set that rounded off the proceedings of
the first part of the match.
Surprisingly, Chela failed to find the similar serve accuracy in the second set and dropped three breakpoints in a row to witness an embarrassing bagel. In just a few minutes time, the whole situation of the match swirled in favour
of the 33-year-old Czech.
The psychological impact of that bagel proved beneficial for the 25th ranked Czech who started the final battle in dominating fashion. Chela somehow hung on to his first two serve games but failed to absorb the pressure
on the third occurrence. A lead of 4-2 was good enough for the Czech to help him steal the win at the end. Both players are in their 30’s but their ability to last this long in the match was worth an applause.
No more breakpoints were witnessed at the red clay courts of Rome and a promising start from the 37th ranked Argentine was flushed down the gutter by his dismal follow up performance. Crowd witnessed a tipsy turvy battle
of an hour and 54 minutes that ended in favour of the deserving winner.
Radek Stepanek awaits the winner of the match between the successful Portuguese qualifier, Adrian Ungur, and the 14th seed Argentine, Juan Monaco. Hopefully, the next round battle will be an all-Argentine clash if Monaco
denies all possibilities of an upset.
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