Taiwan’s Lu Yen-hsun survived a marathon first-round battle with qualifier Mate Pavic of Croatia to progress to the second round of the Gerry Weber Open in Halle, Germany, yesterday.
World No. 48 Lu survived three tiebreaks in 2 hours, 44 minutes as he battled to a 7-6 (7/2), 6-7 (11/13), 7-6 (7/5) victory over world No. 515 Pavic.
Pavic served up a massive 21 aces compared with only three for the Taiwanese No. 1, but Lu saved four of six break-point chances and made two of 12 to set up a second-round clash with another Croatian, world No. 33 Ivo Karlovic.
Photo: AFP
Karlovic had much less trouble in defeating sixth seed Mikhail Youzhny of Russia, the world No. 16, 6-3, 6-4.
On Monday, former champion Philipp Kohlschreiber defeated Italy’s Andreas Seppi 6-3, 6-4 in the first round.
The 30-year-old German, who won the grass-court tournament in 2011, struck nine aces and converted both his break-point chances to win in 1 hour, 9 minutes.
Kohlschreiber next faces French qualifier Pierre-Hugues Herbert, who upset eighth seed Jerzy Janowicz of Poland 7-6 (7/5), 6-2.
Also on Monday, German wild-card Dustin Brown beat Russia’s Andrey Kuznetsov 6-3, 6-4 to set up a second-round meeting with French Open champion Rafael Nadal of Spain.
Another German wild card, Peter Gojowczyk, defeated Poland’s Michal Przysiezny 7-5, 6-4 for a meeting with third seed Milos Raonic of Canada.
Portugal’s Joao Sousa defeated Germany’s Jan-Lennard Struff, another wild card, 6-4, 6-3 and next faces six-time champion Roger Federer, who is seeded second behind Nadal.
Tommy Haas, who won the tournament in 2012, withdrew due to a right-shoulder injury.
QUEEN’S CLUB
AFP, LONDON
Lleyton Hewitt and Bernard Tomic made it a good day for Australia at Queen’s Club as they moved into the second round of the Wimbledon warm-up event on Monday.
Aussie Hewitt began his bid for a record fifth title at the grass-court event in west London with a 6-3, 6-3 victory over Spaniard Daniel Gimeno-Traver.
Hewitt, ranked 43rd in the world, is in the twilight of his career, but he reached the semi-finals at Queen’s last year and took little over an hour to dismiss Gimeno-Traver and set up a meeting with Feliciano Lopez or Dusan Lajovic.
“I just felt pretty sharp out there. I have been hitting the ball really well in practice. It didn’t take me long to get on the grass and feel comfortable,” Hewitt said.
The 33-year-old former Wimbledon champion was joined in the second round by fellow Australians Tomic and James Duckworth.
Tomic had to dig deep before finally seeing off Tim Smyczek of the US 6-4, 3-6, 7-5, while qualifier Duckworth staged an impressive fightback to beat Israel’s Dudi Sela 0-6, 7-6 (7/5), 6-4.
It was Tomic’s first ATP Tour win in nearly five months, but he admitted it was a barely-deserved success after Smyczek, ranked world No. 106, served for the match at 5-4 in the third set.
“I should have lost that. You can play like crap for the whole two sets and then you can find three, four points and you can win the match. It’s just strange,” Tomic said. “If you can win a match like this when you don’t play well, it’s very good for the confidence.”
Next up for Tomic is Radek Stepanek or Mikhail Kukushkin, while Duckworth faces a daunting clash against Czech second seed and former Wimbledon runner-up Tomas Berdych.
Also on Monday, Britain’s Dan Evans claimed a surprise 6-3, 6-7 (5/7), 7-6 (7/2) win against Austria’s Jurgen Melzer.
Melzer is ranked No. 51 in the world, while Evans is languishing down at No. 139, but the British No. 2 fired an ace to win the final-set tiebreak and next faces seventh seed Kevin Anderson of South Africa in the second round.
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