Gabriela Sabatini’s compatriot, Juan Martin Del Potro, has defeated Ernests Gulbis of Latvia in the pre quarter final match of ABN AMRO World Tennis tournament. Del Potro won the match in the straight sets by 7-6, 6-3.
There was a huge difference in the current world rankings of these two players and it was expected that Del Potro would dominate against Gulbis. The same thing happened. It was a power packed performance by the Frenchman. He thrashed his Latvian opponent and made his way into the final 8. The match went on for 1 hour and 40 minutes.
Both the players had a good start. In the opening set, all the 12 games went with the serve which took the set into the tie breaker.
The tie breaker was also pretty close. Both the players had won 5 points each and from that stage, the set could have gone either way. It was Del Potro who won the next two points with a couple of fine forehand shots and sealed the set.
In the second set, both the players held their serve in the first seven games and the score was 4-3 in Del Potro’s favour when the seventh game got finished. The Argentinean broke his opponent’s service in the 8th game and then, wrapped up the match by holding his serve in the ninth game.
The last time that these two players had played against each other was in 2011. In that match, Del Potro was defeated by Gulbis. So, the Argentinean avenged that defeat.
In the post match interview, Del Potro, “Although I won but, honestly speaking, I need to put up an improved performance in the next matches. Today, I felt that I didn’t play my return shots well.”