Rafael Nadal’s countryman, Nicolas Almagro, has defeated Janko Tipsarevic of Serbia in a match of the Mubadala Tennis Championship on Friday. Almagro won the match by 2-6, 7-6, 6-2.
This was the first match for Almagro in this tournament. He was given a bye in the opening round, so, he started his campaign by directly playing in the semi final match.
Almagro was not looking in great touch at the start of the match and he played a lot of loose shots in the opening set. But, as the match went on, he slowly got into his rhythm and eventually came out victorious. He took one hour and 48 minutes to win the match.
In the first set, Tipsarevic was in fine form. He broke Almagro’s service in the very first game and didn’t let the Spaniard make a comeback after that. He sealed the first set easily by 6-2.
In the second set, neither of the two players managed to get a breakthrough in the first 11 games and at the end of the 11th game, the score was 6-5 in the favour of Almagro. In the 12th game, Almagro got a couple of breakpoints, but, he didn’t manage to capitalize on them and the set went into the tie breaker.
However, in the tie breaker, Almagro didn’t waste the opportunities. He got a mini break early and after that, he didn’t look back. He won the tie breaker easily and came back into the match.
In the final set, Almagro was at his very best. He started with a breakthrough in the first game and enhanced that lead with a serve hold in the next game. He got one more breakthrough towards the end of the set.
At the end of the seventh game, Almagro was ahead by 5-2. Tipsarevic needed to break Almagro’s service at least a couple of times to come back into the match, but, he failed in doing so. Almagro easily served out the 8th game and finished off the match.
In the final, Almagro will take on the world no. 1 Novak Djokovic.