Frank Dancevic ruins Taylor Dent’s return
Frank Dancevic, 7th seed, ruined Taylor Dent’s return to the ATP Tour by defeating him 3-6, 7-5, 6-1, in the opening round of the Hall of Fame Tennis Championships in Newport..
Taylor Dent was a set up and serving for the match at 5-4 but Dancevic brkoe and got into the match to turn things around.
Dent, who won his first of four ATP Tour events on Newport’s grass courts in 2002, was playing his first tour match since a pair of back surgeries last year.
“I think that I sensed he was getting a little tired in the second set,” Dancevic said. “He hadn’t played in a long time. Frankly, if he was in shape, I probably wouldn’t have broken him there.”
After breaking Dent to even the second set 5-all, Dancevic held serve before closing out the second set with a well-placed forehand passing shot. He broke again in the second and fourth games of the final set—a stretch where he won eight straight games—before Dent finally held serve in the sixth game.
Dancevic failed on four match points in the sixth game before closing it out when Dent hit a backhand return into the net on the fifth match point.
“I don’t think he’s played that long (in his comeback),” Dancevic said. “If he did, it wouldn’t take him long to play well again.”
Dent, 27, who reached No. 21 in the world in 2005, was given a late wild-card entry into Newport. He wasn’t that surprised by the result.
“It was to be expected,” said Dent, who had surgery last March and September. “I was told a year ago there was no way I was playing tennis and I’m up a break on the (No. 7) seed in the tournament. It was tough to fail the way I did, but it’s all part of the process.”
Dent said the original injury was “a broken vertebrae on both sides.”
Five players that are rated the top players in their respective countries played in Newport in the past two days.
In other first-round play, fifth-seeded John Isner beat Jesse Levine, 6-3, 6-1; eighth-seed Kevin Anderson, South Africa’s top-ranked player, beat Gilles Muller, the top rated player from Luxembourg, 6-7 (3), 6-3, 6-3; Pakistan’s top player, Aisam-Ul-Haq Qureshi defeated Benjamin Becker, 7-5, 7-6 (5); and Prakash Amritraj edged Joseph Sirianni, 6-7 (3), 6-4, 6-4.
Top-seeded Mardy Fish was slated to play his first match on Wednesday. A top seed has never won the title in the tourney’s 31-year history.
Article from Yahoo Sports tennis - Here
AP Photo/Alastair Grant
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Frank Dancevic ruins Taylor Dent’s return
Marat Safin continues come back in Bastad while Moya falls
Marat Safin continues come back in Bastad while Moya falls
Maraf Safin had a terrific run at Wimbledon last week, when no one expected Safin was making the semifinals at the All England Club and Roger Federer was the only one who stoped him.
Now Safin changed the grass for clay but it looks like so far his has adapted to clay court again, today he scored a 2 set win over qualifier Marc Lopez. Marat served six aces to get past Lopez 7-6(6), 7-5.
Safin's next opponent will be Italian, Potito Starace.
This is the first time Starace comes to play in Bastad and he had a very good debut. He faced Carlos Moya, 5th seed and former champion, in a 3 set battle where Potito saved 1 match point in his way to his 6-7(4), 7-6(6), 6-4 victory.
Potito Starace is ranked 58 in the world and his best results so far in 2008 were the quarterfinals at Buenos Aires, Acapulco and Valencia.
Carlos Moya has made the quarterfinals at the Masters Series Hamburg but he's been struggling with a shoulder injury lately. He was a champion in Bastad in 2002 and made the semis in 2003 and 2007.
Jarkko Nieminen, 7th seed, was able to finished his match against Sergio Roitman, from Argentina. Their match was suspended yesterday because of rain when Nieminen was leading 5-4 in the fir