Abhijit Deshmukh
For three consecutive days, the Czech Jiri Vesely took the game to three set marathon battle. And finally when, his opponent Egor Gerasimov (Belarus) hit a shot wide on his serve, Vesely had a loud roar. He raised both his arms towards the sky thanking the almighty for his first ATP tour title in five years. Vesely won his second title of the career defeating eigth seed Geasimov 7-6 (2), 5-7, 6-3 .
Vesely flashed almost every aspect of his game over the course of nearly two hours, from his guns blazing serve, brilliant shot making to his relentless defense to his fiery temper. The first set was neck to neck battle and went into tie breaker. Vesely used his lethal serve and fired couple of aces to wrap the set 7-6(2) in 49 mins. In the second set, Gerasimov read vesely’s serve well and surprised with some return ace. The Belarusian broke vesely’s serve in the 12th game to clinch the second set 7-5.
In the second game of third set, Vesely broke Gerasimov and took 2-0 lead. After that it was all Vesely’s show of serve and volley where he fired some aces with 220 km/hr speed. Gerasimov tried to make comeback in the match but vesely was too big to fall and took the set 6-3. The dapper left handed fired total 94 aces in the tournament including 26 in the final.
After the match, Vesely said “ I had tough quarterfinal and semifinal. I saved six match point in those two games and played several tiebreakers. I was joking with my wife that I’d start the match with tie-break, and it happened (laughs). It’s great to hold a singles trophy after a gap of five years.“
Talking on his opponent(Gerasimov) performance, he added, “I think he played very well in second set and even first set was close one. One point here and there could have changed the result but I held my believed in my serve and held the nerves “
Vesely added, “ There are plenty of things to improve. It’s been great serving but I still believe I can be still better. I think, if you keep improving your best shots then I think you really make it perfect. I will maintain focus on improving my biggest serves”.
After winning the title, vesely has gained 250 ATP points and will be back in top 100. He is likely to be world no.72 on Monday when the fresh ranking will be released.
