Yen-Hsun Lu squashes Benjamin Mitchell to progress into the last four – Caloundra International 2012
Top seed Taiwanese, Yen-Hsun Lu, plonked the Aussie teenager, Benjamin Mitchell, in straight sets 6-4, 6-1, in the quarter-final of the Caloundra Challenger tournament. It was the first face-off between the two professionals
that lasted for an hour and 34 minutes.
Both players were enjoying a satisfactory run of form; winning most of their encounters in recent times. It was obvious that 222nd ranked Aussie will face quite a bit of trouble playing against the
62nd ranked Taiwanese and same happened at the hard courts of Caloundra on Friday. The local teenager couldn’t take advantage of the familiar atmosphere and home support; he could only sneak way with just five games in the whole match.
The top seed started-off the quarter-final with a successful breakthrough; powering his opponent down from the beginning to register an emphatic start. He broke serve again in the third game to triple the lead; leaving his
opponent in all sorts of trouble.
Mitchell got one breakpoints back in the fourth game but wasn’t able to cut down the trail throughout the set. Both players traded breakpoints in the seventh and eighth game that kept the visitor’s lead intact. No more breakthroughs
were witnessed and the local teen lost the initial set with a margin of two games.
The crowd support was consistently boosting the morale of the teenager but the inferior game play led to his downfall. His serve was broken in the second set’s opening game as well. Mitchell tried to settle in the match but
his opponent was always coming up with something extraordinary that pushed him on the back foot. He lost couple of serve games in succession by the end of the set and faced an embarrassing defeat at his home soil by a visitor.
Lu registers his name amongst the last four players of the tournament. He is drawn to contest against the fourth seed Aussie, Greg Jones, in the semi-finals.
Jones defeated his compatriot, John Millman, in an epic three-setter. In another quarter-final, third seed James Duckworth ousted Brydan Klein in a close three-setter. Marinko Matosevic is the fourth of the semi-finalist
who strained past Sebastian Rieschick on the same day.
Tags: