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2/21/08 4:36 AM | Ricky Dimon
The ABN AMRO World Tennis Tournament was supposed to have a second-round showdown between Rafael Nadal and Lleyton Hewitt on its hands when the draw was released. Andreas Seppi had other ideas. The Italian upset Hewitt on Wednesday, so it will be Seppi--not Hewitt--taking on the top-seeded Spaniard on Thursday afternoon.
It will be the third head-to-head meeting for Rafael Nadal and Adreas Seppi when the two players square off in the second round of the ABN AMRO World Tennis Tournament in Rotterdam, Netherlands. The first two matches came on clay, however, on which Seppi has little to no chance against the three-time French Open champion. Because both contests took place in the Davis Cup, they were three-out-of-five sets rather than two-out-of-three. That also favors Nadal due to his physical style of play and his heavy topspin groundstrokes that wear opponents down. Not surprisingly, Nadal is a perfect 2-0 against Seppi on the dirt, first winning in 2005 in four sets and then following it up the next season with a more emphatic 6-0, 6-4, 6-3 decision. The Italian should have much better shot at making things interesting this time around, since the Rotterdam event is staged on indoor hard courts.
Another thing going for Seppi is that he is in strikingly good form at the moment. He reached a career-high ranking of No. 40 just last week and now he stands at 42nd in the world. Early-season highlights in 2007 include a win over eventual Australian Open runner-up Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in Adelaide and a Challenger title in Bergamo, Italy that featured victories over Teimuraz Gabashvili (already a quarterfinalist here in Rotterdam), Fabrice Santoro, and Julien Benneteau. Seppi also advanced one round at the Australian Open before losing in a fourth-set tiebreaker to Mikhail Youzhny. On Wednesday he pulled off a surprising and dramatic upset of Lleyton Hewitt. Seppi saved one match point in the third set before prevailing in a deciding tiebreaker.
Nadal, however, could prove to be a whole different beast for the Italian. The top seed in Rotterdam this week, Nadal is certainly not a big fan of indoor hard courts, but he looked just fine on the surface yesterday. The Spaniard sent dangerous Russian Dmitry Tursunov packing in straight sets, so it looks like he is picking up right where he left off after his first two events of 2008. Nadal reached the final in Chennai (lost to Youzhny) and then made it to the semifinals in Australia before running into an on-fire Jo-Wilfried Tsonga.
Seppi fired 10 aces in his big win over Hewitt, and he will have to serve extremely well against Nadal in order to have a chance at sending shockwaves through Rotterdam with an even bigger surprise. If Seppi gets lulled into long baseline rallies, Nadal will have a clear advantage.
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