Ryan Sweeting battles past Steve Johnson into second round – Tiburon Challenger 2011
Two Americans went face to face in the first round of Tiburon Challenger, hosted in California on October 12th. Top seed, Ryan Sweeting, and a wild card entrant, Steve Johnson, kicked-off the first round of Tiburon in
exciting fashion and laid the platform for one of the fascinating tennis day in California. Sweeting took an hour and fifty minutes to wipe off his fellow American with a score of 4-6, 6-2, 6-2.
World number 70, Sweeting, was going through a very disappointing run having lost seven of his last ten matches whilst his opponent was in exciting form winning eighty percent of his last ten matches so the top seed was clearly
under a lot of pressure. Johnson was also limbering up to tie the head-to-head score with one match win apiece.
Johnson started things off in great fashion pressurizing the top seed with his astonishing game play but Sweeting came back by breaking Johnson’s serve and levelling the score to four games apiece. The match was poised at that
stage but World Number 405 was in no mood to allow his opponent to clinch the first set. Both players smashed two aces but the critical serve break in the sixth set by Johnson helped him in sealing the first set 6-4.
Trailing one set down and pressurized by his poor run of form in recent past, Sweeting, composed himself and place Johnson at the back foot in the second set. He bamboozled his country mate with his guile and power play that forced
four serves double-faults from Johnson. American top seed sealed the second set with a massive 66% points winning rate and comfortably pushed the match into the final set. Johnson was totally outplayed in the second set and he couldn’t even manage to earn
a single break points. Three aces apiece from both players were the main highlights of the set.
The wild card entrant tried his best to level the head-to-head tally and upset the top seed but his efforts went in vain when Sweeting cruised in with a lead of three games to nil in the third set. Sweeting went on to seal the
third set with a score of 6-2 and moved into the second round of tournament.
Top seed, American International, would now face the Alex Bogdanovic in the second round of Tiburon Challenger.
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