Thomaz Bellucci guns down Tomas Berdych to enter semi finals at Madrid Masters
When Tomas Berdych had seen the draw at the Madrid Masters, he probably would have thought that he could easily come away with a place in the semi final at the very least. Instead, he is on his way home with nothing more than a
severely bruised ego after a 7-6(2), 6-3 thumping at the hands of Thomaz Bellucci. With this win, Bellucci has improved his win loss mark to 14-10 matches since January.
Bellucci served and returned to perfection against Berdych and didn’t allow him to take any early advantage. Using the whole court cautiously he moved Berdych around the court to grab easy points. It was an all-Bellucci match.
He moved with maximum speed and peppered the lines with his aggressive ground strokes. Moreover his first serves accuracy defined his service games as he won a perfect 82 percent of his first serve points and smacked two aces in the whole match. The Brazilian
crafted 100 percent breakpoints on return with only one double fault in the match. As a result of his tremendous performance, the Brazilian won the match with a 7-6(2), 6-3 score.
In the first set, Bellucci made a competitive start to the match and scored 86 percent of first serve points to carefully avoid a break of serve in Berdych’s favour. The Czech, on the other hand, showed some mental toughness and
power play in saving equally impressive 85 percent points on first serves to eventually push the set into a deciding tie-break. Using his two-handed backhands shots to devastating effect, Bellucci soon found a double break to wrap up the first set 7-2. The
final set happened to be an evenly contested affair as both players held their serves before Bellucci broke Berdych’s serve in the eighth game to complete the 7-6(2), 6-3 win in one hour and thirty three minutes of play.
The dream week continues for the Brazilian, who has booked a spot in his career first Masters semi-final alongside Novak Djokovic on Friday. Djokovic leads their head-to-head series by 1-0, when the two met during the clay-court
swing at the Rome masters. Djokovic had then defeated Bellucci with a 6-4, 6-4 score line to keep his winning sequence. The Serbian is a perfect 30-0 in his 2011 campaign and has gained five titles in five tries. Bellucci on the other hand knows well that
he will be facing a huge resistance from the second-ranked Serb, who ousted an on-fire David Ferrer on Friday. Nonetheless, from a player partaking in his first career Masters semi-final, Djokovic is a clear favourite to win.
Tags: