Gabriela Sabatini’s countryman, Juan Martin Del Potro, has defeated Nicolas Mahut of France in the second round of the ongoing Apia International Sydney Tennis Tournament. This win has taken Del Potro to the quarter final round where he will play against the Czech player Radek Stepanek.
This was Del Potro’s first match in the 2014 season and as expected, he was a bit rusty at the start. There wasn’t that much fluency in his shots and he gifted away the points to his opponent on a regular basis to lose the opener by a big margin of 1-6, but, after that, he looked an entirely different player. He committed very few errors in the next couple of sets and ended up winning the match.
This was only the second time that Del Potro was facing Mahut. Before this, these two guys had taken on each other at Flushing Meadows 6 years back in 2007 and in that match also; it was Del Potro who had emerged out as winner.
The 25 years old Argentinean player would be quite happy to begin the new season on a winning note. He had played brilliantly right through the previous season and he would like to do the same in the ongoing season too.
Talking to the reporters after the match against Mahut, Del Potro said, “This was my first game in about eight weeks and I think I played alright. The surface was quite quick and I had a bit of difficult initially, but, I adjusted my game accordingly in the last two sets.”
“Nicolas is a difficult guy to play against. Every time I play against him, there is a close match.”
Del Potro is currently at the 5th position in the official ATP rankings.