Great stuff from Alexandr that after his disappointing exclusion from the Olympic Games manages to win an important tournament for his career.
The Match
It was a 2h and 15 minutes battle won by Dolgolopov with a “clean tennis”. Actually it was quite curious to see how Tommy managed to win the first set when Alexandr was playing very well. There was a crucial point when Dolgolopov was serving to stay in the 1st set when he was 5-6 down to have to surrender to the rain. The duo came back to the court only 2 hours later when Tommy won the tiebreak. The second set wasn’t any different with the (big) exception that the Ukrainian was able to winning it to then stroll to the victory in the decider.
Comments
“I think a small part of me knew that I had to play better when I needed. I dropped some points from Umag and I understood that I needed to get some points to get back into the top 20. Because once you are there, you don’t really want to get out of there. That was additional motivation for me.” said Alexandr
“Whether I won or lost the second set there, I cracked a little bit mentally,” Haas commented
With this win Dolgolopov will climbs 9 places to be world no.16. Tommy Haas gains 11 places to become world nr.25. Both should further improve their ranking in the middle term.
