Tobias Kamke undoes Julian Reister; advances into the second round – Gerry Weber Open 2011
In an all German duel, Tobias Kamke earned a 4-3 retirement victory against Julian Reister to advance into the second round of the Gerry Weber Open 2011, an ATP World Tour 250 series event held in Halle, Germany on Monday. 25-year-old
Reister was forced to retire with a right shoulder injury.
Ranked 88th in the South African Airways ATP World Tour rankings, Kamke was leading 4-3 when his compatriot, ranked 48 places below him, felt severe pain on his right shoulder. He couldn’t even move his arm after thirty
minutes from the beginning of the match and eventually retired. As a result, Kamke earned a second round spot in this grass court event.
Kamke made a thunderous entry at Gerry Weber Stadion and held his opening serve to level the scores at 1-1. He lost his serve in the fourth game but with his tremendous counter attacking skills, he snatched the break back in the
proceeding game. The higher ranked German then held his serve to square the scores at 3-3 and got another coveted break in the seventh game to take the lead by 4-3 when the match was stopped.
Poor Reister on the other hand made an excellent start in the match and held his serve in the first game through blistering forehands from his box of tricks. He even found an early break to take an early lead. However, an injury
forced him to retire from the event.
The lower ranked German, who was standing on a five match losing streak, produced a higher first serve share of 58 percent as compared to Kamke’s 45 percent and registered an impressive 60 percent win on it. He saved two out of
four breakpoints and converted one out of two breakpoint opportunities to his advantage.
Kamke hasn’t had much progress this season so far but made quarter-final berths at Rome and Furth Challengers. He has poor records in ATP events but he seemed to re-form in this tournament and high spiritedly advanced into the
second round after showing amazing skills in this half setter match.
Up next for him is the winner of the match between eight seeded Canadian Milos Raonic and Spanish Pablo Andujar.
Yen-Hsun Lu will be joining Kamke in the second round after warding off early resistance against Fin Jarkko Nieminen. The Taipei dominated in the first set tie-breaker and converted a breakpoint opportunity set to his advantage
in the eighth game of the final to clinch the match with a 7-6(2), 6-3 win in one and half hour.
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