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  • The number two seed Nicolas Almagro easily dispatches Fabio Fognini

    2/17/08 10:01 AM | Cheryl Murray
    - There had been high hopes for this match. Italy's Fabio Fognini has been having a spectacular clay court season in South America, and seemed to be in good form going into his match against Nicolas Almagro.

    Almagro, on the other hand, had not played particularly well in his quarterfinal match on Friday and the time seemed ripe for an upset. Nothing could have been further from the truth. From the moment the first ball was struck, Fognini seemed out of sorts and he never found himself in the 54 minutes it took Almagro to deliver this drubbing.

    It is difficult to pinpoint whether Fognini's serve was worse or his return, as both let him down spectacularly. In the first set, Fognini failed to save a single break point (Almagro was 3 for 3). He won one point on the 11 second serves he hit, and was one for nine on Almagro's first serve. But perhaps the most telling statistic was the fact that he won only nine points in the entire set. Had he turned cartwheels in the middle of the court instead of playing, the set could not have gone worse. Almagro broke to take the set as Fognini stood helplessly by. If anyone watching thought that perhaps it was just first set nerves, such as beset Rafael Nadal in the 2006 French Open finals, they would have been sadly mistaken.

    The second set played out in exactly the same way as the first. Fognini, if you'll pardon the pun, walked around as though in a fog. Whereas in the first set he won 9 points, in the second he bettered that number to 16 and even had three breakpoints. In the end, it did not matter in the least. Almagro pushed him around the court, repeatedly catching the Italian out of position and forcing him to slap at balls. Almagro will be certainly be well rested for his 2008 final debut against Carlos Moya.

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