Gabriela Sabatini’s countryman, Juan Monaco, has been defeated by Kevin Anderson of South Africa in the second round of Madrid Open. Anderson won the match in three sets by 7-6(5), 3-6, 6-4.
Before this match, these two players had faced each other only once. That match was played last year in Houston and Monaco was the winner.
Anderson was looking to avenge that loss and he succeeded eventually. However, he had to toil hard for 2 hours and 30 minutes for that.
In the next round, Anderson will face the Czech player Tomas Berdych who has been given the 6th seed in this competition. For those of you who enjoy tennis betting at it’s best, we’d recommend backing Berdych.
In the first set, the first couple of games went with the serve and the scores were levelled at 1-1 at the end of the second game.
Monaco got a breakthrough in the 3rd game and then, by serving out the next game, he increased his lead to 3-1. However, he lost his lead pretty soon as he was broken back in the 6th game. There were no breakthroughs in the next 6 games and the set went into the tie breaker.
Anderson put his opponent into trouble with a couple of early mini breaks in the tie breaker. Monaco couldn’t recover from there and ended up losing the tie breaker to get down by a set.
In the second set, Monaco looked a lot more positive. He broke Anderson’s serve in the 6th game to take a lead of 4-2. The next couple of games went with the serve and the score was 5-3 in Monaco’s favour when the 8th game got finished. Anderson had to sneak in a breakthrough to take the set further, but, he couldn’t do that. With a serve hold in the 9th game, Monaco sealed the set.
In the third and final set, Monaco’s performance deteriorated under pressure. His serve was broken thrice in the set and he lost the set by 4-6 to get knocked out of the tournament.