Ruben Bemelmans defeats Andre Begemann; moves into the main draw – Gerry Weber Open 2011
Qualifying third seed, Ruben Bemelmans of Belgium eased past Germany’s Andre Begemann in straight sets to advance into the main draw of the Gerry Weber Open 2011, a grass court tournament held in Halle, Germany. Bemelmans earned
a 6-4, 6-2 victory over the 26-year-old at his home soil on Sunday.
World number 169 Belgian outshined Begemann, ranked 116 places below him, in every department of tennis to book a first round spot at Gerry Weber Stadion. Bemelmans took sixty-five minutes to triumph over the lower ranked German
in front of his home crowd on their second face to face.
23-year-old Belgian raged into the opening set and held his opening serve to level the scores at 1-1. Later he held his remaining serves with exquisite forehands from his box of tricks and converted the only breakpoint opportunity
to his advantage to pocket the opener with a 6-4 score line. Regardless of clobbering a lower first serve share of 65 percent as compared to Begemann’s 78 percent, Bemelmans registered a spectacular 88 percent win on it.
The higher ranked kept momentum rolling into the final set and reeled of his entire serves convincingly. He faced zero breakpoint and converted two out of seven breakpoint opportunities to his advantage to win the set with an assuring
6-2 score line. The Belgian earned much better stats this time as he produced a higher first serve share of 62 percent as opposed to Begemann’s 53 percent and pocket an impressive 85 percent win on it.
The youngster lost in the opening qualifying round of French open and has had a mediocre season so far. He displayed exceptional skills at Wolfsburg Challenger, where he won the title, and at Alessandria Challenger, where he made
a quarter-final berth. The Belgian re-ignited his spark in this ATP 250 series event and dumped Germans, Simon Stadler, Dieter Kindlmann and Begemann in straight sets to advance into the first round.
He will next face Czech Tomas Berdych. The second seeded Berdych is in good shape this season after making semi-final and quarter-final berths at many tournaments. However, he lacks confidence since he lost to French qualifier
Stephane Robert in the opening round of French Open before entering here at Germany.
Jan Hernych will be joining the seed in the main draw. The Czech barely did anything in the opening set but bounced back to win against Bosnia and Herzegovinian Amer Delic in a 1-6, 6-3, 6-2 mouth watering match later that day.
Hernych took one hour and twenty-three minutes to overwhelm Delic after converting four out of nine breakpoint opportunities to his advantage.
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