Richard Gasquet defeats Simone Bolelli to advance into fourth round – Wimbledon Championships 2011
Seventeenth seeded French Richard Gasquet dumped Italy’s Simone Bolelli in straight sets at Wimbledon Championships 2011, third of the fourth Grand Slam event taking place at London, United Kingdom. He registered a 6-3, 6-2, 6-4 victory over the Bologna native to sail into the fourth round on Friday.
Ranked 13th in the South African Airways ATP World Tour rankings, Gasquet maintained his winning record perfect after triumphing over the Italian at SW-19 in one hour and forty-five minutes on their fourth meeting. He has now extended lead in the head-to-head series by 4-0 against Bolelli.
25-year-old Gasquet smoothly reeled off entire serves and after converting the only breakpoint opportunity to his advantage, he sealed the opener with a 6-3 score line in half hour. The Frenchman committed only two unforced errors as opposed to Bolelli’s eight and produced a much higher first serve share of 70 percent as compared to Italian’s 52 percent. He also earned an amazing 81 percent win on it and hammered eleven winners to sugar coat the set further.
He kept the momentum running into the second set as he broke the Italian’s serve three times to extend his lead. Despite losing a serve, Gasquet converted all three breakpoint chances to his advantage to clinch the second set with an assuring 6-2 score line in another half hour.
The seed carried his winning ways into the final set. He produced a better first serve share and earned a plausible 76 percent win on it. Gasquet saved both breakpoints faced and converted one out of five breakpoint opportunities to his advantage to clinch the set with a 6-4 win in forty-four minutes.
"I played well today," said Gasquet. "It was a dangerous opponent; he beat Wawrinka. At the start I had to play well to be confident. He fell down a little bit, and that was the key of the match. I wanted to be aggressive and to lead the game. I played two very good sets, and after that I felt a little bit of pressure. But I finished the match with a good serve."
Next up for the Frenchman is British number one, Andy Murray and both have faced each other here back in 2008.
"The next couple of days practice will be important to make sure I get some hitting outdoors," he said regarding his match to Gasquet. " I don't know how much of an advantage (the rest) is, most of the time on the grass the matches aren't too physical, but I'll have to wait and see if it's an advantage or not, but the next couple of days it will be important to keep the intensity up and keep focused."
Fourth seeded Murray trashed Croat Ivan Ljubicic in a four set thriller to reach this spot.
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