Tobias Kamke earns upset win against Pere Riba in first round – German Tennis Championships 2011
Tobias Kamke, a German wild card entrant at the bet-at-home German Tennis Championships pulled of a spectacular two set upset against his opponent, the seasoned Spaniard Pere Riba, delighting the home crowd. With this win the tally
of German wins in the first round matches on Monday shot up to three; previously that day German wild card Julian Reister won 2-0 against Uzbek Denis Istomin and qualifier Bastian Knittel surprised everyone by defeating Croatian Ivan Dodig 6-4, 6-3. The three
Germans are now safely berthed for the second round matches of the home tournament at Hamburg.
The 16 seeded players of the singles round had earlier received byes to the second round competition. They are led by top seed Gael Monfils, French player currently ranked at No. 7.
Kamke, the 2010 ATP Newcomer of the Year is performing superbly this season. He managed to reach the semi finals at New Port recently and gave a tough time to Andy Murray in his second round match at the Wimbledon earlier this
year. Pere Riba is nestled comfortably at his No. 72 position in the world rankings and most of the points that have enabled him to reach here have been won off clay courts, similar to the one at Hamburg. The Spaniard had recently bowed out to his compatriot
David Ferrer in a second round match at the 2011 Swedish Open in Bastad.
This match raises their head-to-head mark to 2-0 in Kamke’s favour.
Kamke powered through the first set with an emphatic 6-1 win against his opponent. Riba was able to save 5 breakpoints but Kamke bagged 3 destructive serve breaks to render Riba helpless. Kamke faced his only break of serve in
the entire match in this set but was able to save it without ruffling any feathers. Both the players won 9 first serve points and Riba committed a single double fault.
The second set, opened by Kamke followed precedent set by the first. Kamke registered two excruciating serve breaks in games 2 and 6 of the second set and did not even face a single breakpoint in this set. Kamke has a first serve
accuracy of 79% while his struggling opponent’s percentage dropped below 50. The match which lasted a mere 75 minutes saw Kamke deal a severe blow to Riba, one from which he could never recover. The second set also ended 6-1 sealing the game in Kamke’s favour.
Kamke will now face 7th seed Czech Juan Ignacio Chela in his second round match of the tournament.
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