Stanislas Wawrinka overcomes Robin Haase to earn a quarter-final berth – Swiss Indoors Basel 2011
Swiss number two, Stanislas Wawrinka, had to recover from a one-set deficit to take down the world number 40, Robin Haase of Netherlands, in the second round of the Davidoff Swiss Indoors Basel on Thursday afternoon.
19th ranked Wawrinka battled for two hours and eight minutes of play to settle the three-setter at 4-6, 6-1, 6-2, to book himself a spot in the quarter-final rounds of the ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals) World
Tour 500 event.
Being played on the indoor hard courts of the St. Jakobshalle in Basel, Switzerland, the contest witnessed an amazing turnaround by the local contestant, who lived right up to the expectations of his home crowd. Wawrinka dropped
the opening set badly but made a ballistic come back in the next two sets to absolutely annihilate his opponent in the matchup. He dropped merely three games in the last two sets of the contest and wrapped up victory in an assertive fashion in the end.
“It’s always a lot of pressure when you start a match because you want to play good, you want to stay in the tournament and play a lot of matches,” Wawrinka said of playing on home soil, “but then you need to just stay focused
on your game and try to play your best match possible.”
It was Wawrinka’s 34th victory in the running ATP season and the third successive one against the Dutch opponent in singles encounters. The Swiss defeated Haase in Chennai, India, earlier this year and repeated the similar
performance to outplay the Dutch once again on Thursday, leading 3-0 against him in all-time head-to-head series.
26-year-old Wawrinka crafted a total of 17 break opportunities in the matchup but only four conversions proved sufficient for him to wind up the match in his favour. He suffered a cracking serve break in the ninth game of the opener
to lose the first set at 4-6 but came out firing at Haase in the following set. He launched his onslaught on the unseeded Dutch competitor, breaking his serve twice to cruise through the second set at 6-1. Wawrinka stung two more successive break points in
the second set as well and rocketed away to victory at 6-2, earning a place in the round of eight.
Wawrinka will face the unseeded German, Florian Mayer, in the next round on Friday evening to fight for a spot in the semis of the Davidoff Swiss Indoors Basel. Mayer registered a crushing straight sets victory over Croatia’s Ivan
Ljubicic, 6-,3 6-1, in the second round of the tournament on Thursday evening.
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