MONACO VS TOMIC

David Nalbandian’s countryman, Juan Monaco, will take on Bernard Tomic of Australia in the second round of the Barcelona Open.

Tomic has been going through a tough time at the moment. His performance in the last few tournaments hasn’t been up to the mark at all. He had begun the year on a winning note by becoming the champion in Apia International Sydney tennis tournament, but, after that, he lost his form and has been getting knocked out of the events early.

It’s true that Tomic has got difficult draws in tournaments, but, the kind of potential he has got, he should be doing better than what he has done so far.

This year, Tomic has been beaten by some players against whom he was expected to win. In the opening round of Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships, he was defeated by Victor Hanescu and then, Alexandr Dolgopolov did the same to him in the first round of the Monte Carlo Masters.

Also, featuring for Australia in the Davis Cup clash against Uzbekistan, he lost to Denis Istomin. Had be played up to his talent, he would not have been defeated by these players.

On the other hand, Juan Monaco is a completely different player on clay courts. His game goes to the next level on this kind of surface. He would definitely have been backing himself to get better of the Aussie youngster.

Monaco is coming into this tournament with some good form. He had managed to reach the final 4 in the tournament in Houston and he was looking in good touch in the Monte Carlo Masters as well. He got defeated by Novak Djokovic in the third round there, but, he fought till the very end in that match.

Also, if we compare the world rankings of these two players, Monaco is ahead of Tomic by some margin.

So, one can say that it’s Monaco who is the favourite to win tomorrow’s match against Tomic.

David Nalbandian Serving In Super Slow Motion – Indian Wells 2013 – BNP Paribas Open

Nalbandian Video clip Score: five / five

Re: David Nalbandian angrily kicks Linesman and gets disqualified – Queens 2012 Final

Nalbandian Online video Ranking: one / five

KNOCKED OUT

David Nalbandian has been knocked out from the opening round of the ongoing Sony Open. He has been defeated by Jarkko Nieminen of Finland in the first round. Nieminen won the match in three sets by 2-6, 6-4, 6-3. In the second round, Nieminen’s opponent will be Martin Klizan of Slovakia.

In the match against Nalbandian, Nieminen made a comeback from the verge of defeat. He had lost the opening set and he had dropped his first couple of serves in the second set as well. He was clearly struggling at 0-3 in the second set. All Nalbandian needed was three serve holds and he would have been through. But, that didn’t happen. From that stage, Nieminen fought back in a remarkable manner and eventually managed to get better of Nalbandian.

This was an absolute cracker of a contest. It went on for 109 minutes and the spectators would have enjoyed each and every second of those 109 minutes.

This was Nieminen’s fifth victory over Nalbandian. These two players have played against each other 13 times so far.

Nalbandian hit more winners than his opponent in the match. He hit 15, while, Nieminen hit 14. Also, Nalbandian committed lesser unforced errors (33) as compared to Nieminen (27).  Despite that, the Argentinean superstar had to suffer defeat.

Nalbandian didn’t start that well in the first set. He lost his very first service game in the match to get trailed by 0-1. Nieminen held his serve in the next game which gave him a 2-0 lead.

After the first couple of games, Nalbandian’s performance got better. All of a sudden, he started timing his shots to perfection and Nieminen was looking clueless. The Finnish player lost 9 games in a row and Nalbandian was not too far away from victory.

But, the momentum changed again. Nieminen broke in the 4^th game of the second set and that breakthrough put him on the right track. He didn’t look back from there. By winning 6 out of the next 7 games, he won the second set by 6-4.

In the decider, Nieminen got an early breakthrough and he kept that lead till the end to pull off a great victory.

TSONGA WINS OPEN 13

Jo-Wilfried Tsonga has won Open 13 by defeating Tomas Berdych of Czech Republic in the final match. Tsonga defeated Berdych by 3-6, 7-6(6), 6-4. This was the 10^th ATP title won by Tsonga in his career.

This was Tsonga’s second victory over Berdych in six meetings. Berdych was seeded higher than Tsonga in this tournament. The Czech player was given top seed, while, Tsonga was the third seeded player. Read more »

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Nalbandian Online video Rating: 5 / 5