Sunday, June 12, 2011

Monfils rises, Dolgopolov falls in Halle second round

HALLE, Germany (AP)?Third-seeded Gael Monfils of France eased into the quarterfinals of the Gerry Weber Open on Thursday with 6-2, 6-3 victory over Croatian Ivan Dodig.

Monfils lost just two points in going ahead 4-0 with two breaks in the first set. Dodig finally held serve and broke Monfils to get back to 4-2, but the Frenchman broke right back and finished off the set after 28 minutes.

Monfils broke twice in the second set and closed the match with a backhand winner down the line after 1 hour, 3 minutes.

?I feel good. I?m serving good and moving good,? said Monfils, who reached the quarters at the French Open. ?I?m doing good adjusting my movements to grass. I am quite happy with my game.

?I can hit better and hit stronger. I?m thinking too much, it?s not natural. And I can work a bit more on my serve. (My grass game) is good, but I still have a lot of stuff to improve to be very, very good.?

Sixth-seeded Florian Mayer set up a quarterfinal date with Monfils thanks to just one break in a 7-6 (4), 3-6, 6-4 victory over Yen-hsun Lu of Taiwan.

After both players held serve through to the first set tiebreaker, Mayer took two straight service points off Lu to claim the first set.

Lu grabbed his only break in the match in the eighth game of the second set to make it 5-3 and leveled the match a game later.

The first nine games of the third set went with serve before Mayer picked up three match points at 5-4. Lu double-faulted on the first match point after 2 hours, 15 minutes.

?In the last game I finally I believed in myself to go after it aggressively and got the break,? Mayer said. ?I was disappointed with my return today. I didn?t feel comfortable and couldn?t read his serve.?

Mayer expects a difficult match against Monfils in Friday?s quarterfinals.

?I have been surprised how strong he has played here,? Mayer said. ?I didn?t think he would be this strong on grass. He is playing very offensively. He?s going to the net, which we don?t usually see. And he serves very well.?

Alexandr Dolgopolov of Ukraine was the first seeded player to lose as he was beaten by Philipp Kohlschreiber of Germany, 6-3, 7-6 (5).

Kohlschreiber will face either defending champion Lleyton Hewitt or Andreas Seppi in the quarters. Hewitt and Seppi were playing later Thursday in the final match of the day.

Source: http://feeds.tennis.com/~r/tenniscom-news/~3/TINnzUOnmiM/

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