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5/2/08 11:54 PM | Ricky Dimon
Denis Gremelmayr's Barcelona run continues, as he stuns Nicolas Almagro in a third-set tiebreaker to advance to the semifinals. Who stands in his way of the final? None other than Rafael Nadal.
Unseeded and unheralded Denis Gremelmayr survived an up-and-down contest with clay-court specialist Nicolas Almagro in the quarterfinals of the Open Sabadell Atlantico on Friday, prevailing 6-2, 3-6, 7-6(7) in two hours and nine minutes.
Gremelmayr came out on fire and seemed poised to finish off the upset much quicker than it ended up taking. The German surged to a 4-0 lead in the first set and put things in cruise-control mode to take the opening frame of play 6-2. He played like he had nothing to lose, whereas Almagro played like he had everything to lose, being the heavy favorite in the contest.
The 10th-seeded Almagro, however, was not about to let his opponent get off so easily. He broke Gremelmayr in the second game of the second set to take a 2-0 advantage and that was all he needed to level the match. Both players held the rest of the way as Almagro took the set 6-3. It really wasn’t even that close. Gremelmayr won just two points total in Almagro’s five service games.
With Gremelmayr having dominated the first set and Almagro having owned the second, it was only fitting that the decisive set became an up-and-down, hotly-contested battle. Both players saw their first-serve percentages plummet and that allowed for four straight breaks of serve in the early going. Every time Almagro broke it seemed like the match was his due to his service dominance in set two, but every time Gremelmayr broke right back. Finally, however, they settled down and the Spaniard held at both 4-5 and 5-6 to stay in the match.
The deciding tiebreaker progressed in similar fashion to the entire third set. Almagro consistently would get up a mini-break, but when he had the match on his racket, he would give it right back to Gremelmayr. Almagro saved one match point at 6-7 with his 11th ace of the match, but Gremelmayr won the next point on Almagro’s serve and closed out the proceedings nine points to seven.
Gremelmayr’s reward is a semifinal date with Rafael Nadal. The top-seeded Spaniard has won 101 of his last 102 matches on clay.
Gremelmayr won 12 less points than Almagro, but won the match by winning almost all of the most important ones.
Almagro blew a chance to really measure where he stands in the clay-court rankings, as he would have played Nadal next.
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Did you know that... Pete Sampras has been ranked number 1 during the longest period of time, 286 weeks.
janhavi, Nov 21, 2008 1:53 PM
janhavi, Nov 21, 2008 5:53 AM
james007, Nov 21, 2008 3:46 AM
Avalaine, Nov 20, 2008 9:06 PM
james007, Nov 20, 2008 8:03 AM
gordana, Nov 21, 2008 9:50 AM
tennisfan2, Nov 12, 2008 4:24 AM
elle, Nov 10, 2008 2:11 AM
Denis Gremelmayr
Nicolas Almagro
Open Sabadell Atlántico 2008
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