Nicolas Almagro powered down Gilles Simon to reach final of the Open de Nice Cote D’Azur

Nicolas Almagro powered down Gilles Simon to reach final of the Open de Nice Cote D’Azur

Third seed, Nicolas Almagro, crushed the local star, Gilles Simon, with a breadstick at the Open De Nice Cote D’Azur 2012 on Friday. He jolted down a 6-1, 6-3 success against the world number 12 to power into the title-round at this ATP (Association of Tennis
Professionals) World Tour 250 event held in Nice, France.
The ultra-fit Spaniard displayed brilliant skills to oust Simon in 68 minutes. Encountering each other for the fourth time, Almagro not only avenged his loss at the Hamburg ATP event last circuit but also levelled the FedEx ATP Head 2 Head series by 2-2 against
the French.
Almagro went out of control in the opening set at the Nice Lawn Tennis Club. After Simon held his serve in the opening game, the Spaniard blasted powerful groundstrokes to reel off the following six games in a row. He brushed off both breakpoints he came across
and capitalised on three out of five break chances to pocket the breadstick.
Ranked 14th in the South African Airways ATP World Tour Rankings, Almagro kept momentum floating into the second set. He earned the desiderated break in the fourth game and leaped to a 4-1 lead. The Spaniard swiped in remaining serves with poise and clicked
the set with a 6-3 victory.
Summing up the 26-year-old’s performance, Almagro hammered eight aces and brushed off all four breakpoints he faced. He manifested a lower first serve share of 49 per cent as compared to his rival’s 54 per cent but impressively availed 22 out of 27 points on
it.
Next up for Almagro is the American qualifier, Brian Baker, who battled past Russia’s Nikolay Davydenko in three sets to set-up this meeting.

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Posted by Awais Ahmed on May 25 2012. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry