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  • Valencia round 2: Starace (8) vs Monfils

    4/16/08 2:07 AM | David Cox
    - Potito Starace wasted little time in securing his last 16 place, demolishing compatriot Simone Bolelli 6-3, 6-1 in just over an hour, a performance which would have set alarm bells ringing in the Monfils camp

    The Frenchman progressed relatively easily himself on Monday, brushing aside Argentina’s Maximo Gonzalez 6-3, 6-4. He last played Starace on the way to his first (and so far only) career title in Sopot 3 years ago, winning a tight 3 set battle 3-6, 7-5, 6-4. It was revenge for an 6-2, 6-3 clay-court lesson Starace had handed out in Stuttgart a couple of weeks earlier

    Since then Monfils has flirted briefly with the top 25 before bad form and then injury took a hold. He’s only had a handful of matches since his return from a knee injury (which kept him out for 6 months) in Dubai. Starace has made the most of his clay-court prowess and has been in the top 30. He’s had some decent clay results already this year, two quarters in South America and the Napoli super-challenger title. I’d expect him to take this in straights, Monfils hasn’t quite yet returned to the levels of athleticism he had pre-injury and he isn’t playing with enough aggression to trouble Starace on clay at the moment

    Robredo - Ventura is the only other round 2 match on Wednesday. Robredo won their last clash 7-5, 6-0 in Estoril a few years back and I’d expect this to be another confidence booster for the 3rd seed ahead of more serious tests in latter rounds. Ventura survived a 2 and a half hour marathon 7-6(3), 7-6(6) against qualifier David Marrero earlier today but his luck will run out here

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Comments

I can't open Federer and Safin's new articles. I only receive an error message asking to let Tennistalk.com know.

tennisnakama , 4/16/08 2:11 AM


apologies about that....its a technical problem which the tennistalk admin are trying to resolve.....

DavidC , 4/16/08 11:42 PM



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