Roberto Bautista-Agut stuns Yen-Hsun Lu in the first round – St. Petersburg Open 2012
Spain’s world number 87, Roberto Bautista-Agut, grabbed just his second victory on the ATP World Tour by upsetting the sixth seed, Yen-Hsun Lu of Chinese Taipei, in a one sided match at the St. Petersburg Open in Russia.
The Spaniard allowed his more experienced opponent to win just six games in the entire contest, winning it in straight sets 6-4, 6-2 in just one hour and 32 minutes.
Bautista-Agut and Lu did not drop their serve in the first five games, taking the score to 3-2 in favour of the former. The Spanish participant struck in the sixth to move ahead 4-2 but Lu did not take much time to square off the
proceedings at 4-4. However, The Taiwanese’s effort got wasted, when he could not stop Bautista-Agut from clinching the following two games and closing it 6-4.
The Spanish contestant served poorly, as he failed to hit any ace and made three horrible double faults, managing to put in just 49 percent of the first serves correctly. The 24-year-old’s only respectable performance was that
he converted 13 of the 17 of them into points. Nevertheless, the 6ft tall saved five of the seven break points he faced and converted both he received in the opener.
Lu showed some glimpses of his true game at the start of the second set, grabbing a breakthrough in the opening one and winning his subsequent serve to attain a 2-0 lead. However, the Taiwanese faced some embarrassing moments afterwards,
as he lost six in a row to go down 2-6.
The 29-year-old, Lu, faced difficulty in winning points on his deliveries, losing eight of the 15 first and five of the seven second serve points. Bautista-Agut, on the other hand, could not put away the only break threat he came
across but availed three of the five chances he created in the second set.
The Spaniard’s only previous tour-level win came at this year’s Sony Ericsson Open, where he stunned the then world number 45, Andreas Seppi of Italy, in three sets 6-3, 1-6, 6-3 in the first round.
Bautista-Agut will either meet Russia’s Teymuraz Gabashvili or Belarusian player, Nikolai Fidirko, in the second round.
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