KNOCKED OUT

David Nalbandian has been knocked out from the opening round of the ongoing Sony Open. He has been defeated by Jarkko Nieminen of Finland in the first round. Nieminen won the match in three sets by 2-6, 6-4, 6-3. In the second round, Nieminen’s opponent will be Martin Klizan of Slovakia.

In the match against Nalbandian, Nieminen made a comeback from the verge of defeat. He had lost the opening set and he had dropped his first couple of serves in the second set as well. He was clearly struggling at 0-3 in the second set. All Nalbandian needed was three serve holds and he would have been through. But, that didn’t happen. From that stage, Nieminen fought back in a remarkable manner and eventually managed to get better of Nalbandian.

This was an absolute cracker of a contest. It went on for 109 minutes and the spectators would have enjoyed each and every second of those 109 minutes.

This was Nieminen’s fifth victory over Nalbandian. These two players have played against each other 13 times so far.

Nalbandian hit more winners than his opponent in the match. He hit 15, while, Nieminen hit 14. Also, Nalbandian committed lesser unforced errors (33) as compared to Nieminen (27).  Despite that, the Argentinean superstar had to suffer defeat.

Nalbandian didn’t start that well in the first set. He lost his very first service game in the match to get trailed by 0-1. Nieminen held his serve in the next game which gave him a 2-0 lead.

After the first couple of games, Nalbandian’s performance got better. All of a sudden, he started timing his shots to perfection and Nieminen was looking clueless. The Finnish player lost 9 games in a row and Nalbandian was not too far away from victory.

But, the momentum changed again. Nieminen broke in the 4^th game of the second set and that breakthrough put him on the right track. He didn’t look back from there. By winning 6 out of the next 7 games, he won the second set by 6-4.

In the decider, Nieminen got an early breakthrough and he kept that lead till the end to pull off a great victory.