Battler Wawrinka wins
Swiss overcomes Vasselin; Australian Raonic eases past Hanescu
Lucky loser Edouard Roger-Vasselin had nearly pulled off the biggest upset of the meet yet before defending champion Stanislas Wawrinka bounced back in time to put it past the French journeyman in the second round of the Chennai Open here at the Nungabakkam Stadium on Wednesday.
In a battle, which lasted close to two and half hours, the third-seeded Swiss rallied from the brink to score a hard-fought 3-6, 6-3, 7-5 win to set up a quarterfinal clash with Japanese qualifier Go Soeda who scalped fifth-seeded Croatian Ivan Dodig 7-6 (8-6), 6-3 in another pre-quarterfinal encounter.
The first set went on serves till the fourth game before Roger-Vasselin and Wawrinka traded breaks for the next three games that left the Frenchman up 4-3 which he made 5-3 holding the eighth game. Wawrinka threw the next game away to surrender the set. Egged on by a noisy crowd, the World No 17 levelled the scores by winning the second set 6-3, courtesy breaks in the seventh and ninth games.
The decider was the battle of wits as the two didn’t give away much till the sixth game when Roger-Vasselin broke ahead to take a 4-3 and then 5-3 lead. Serving for the set at 5-4, the World No 106, however, committed two unforced errors and a gleeful Wawrinka pulled a game back to level the scores before earning the decisive break and with it the match.
Another seeded player Milos Raonic, though, didn’t have much of problem as he overwhelmed Victor Hanescu 6-1, 6-4 in just 74 minutes. Raonic didn’t quite ace his way to victory but the 6’5’’ Montenegro-born player did enough to hustle the fellow big-serving Hanescu to send down a firm warning to other title contenders. Having begun the year 2011 ranked 156, Raonic blasted his way to finish the season at 25. In the process, the Canadian bagged his first ATP title and scalped the likes of Fernando Verdasco (twice), David Ferrer and Michail Youzhny in the process.
Raonic will meet Dudi Sela in the quarterfinals after the Israeli knocked out Frenchman Benoit Paire 4-6, 6-2, 6-4 in another second-round match.
With a reputation to send down aces by the dozen, the 21-year-old earned a break as early as in the second game of the first set and made it 3-0 by holding the third. Raonic isn’t the typical serve-and-volley player, but there were a fair few occasions when he attacked the net to off-set his rival’s game-plan. Starting on the back foot, Hanescu had to do all the running to get back in to the match. The Romanian did up the ante; his serves got sharper and bigger and his spinning backhand returns had Raonic in some trouble but Hanescu had to do much more than that even to catch up with his rival.
As Raonic established a 4-1 lead, Hanescu didn’t offer much resistance in the next two games to surrender the set in fewer than 30 minutes.
Coming off a knee injury, Hanescu, despite a dominant win over American Sam Querrey in the first round on Tuesday, seemed a bit rusty to begin with but the 30-year-old put up a much-improved performance that forced his opponent to work a little harder. Hanescu, in fact, had three break points at 3-3 but Raonic came up with three big serves to dash the hopes of the World No 90.
Results (singles, pre-quarters): 4-Milos Raonic (Can) bt Victor Hanescu (Rom) 6-1, 6-4; Dudi Sela (Isr) bt Benoit Paire (Fra) 4-6, 6-2, 6-4; 3-Stanislas Wawrinka (Sui) bt Edouard Roger-Vasselin (Fra) 3-6, 6-3, 7-5; Go Soeda (Jap) bt Ivan Dodig (Cro) 7-6 (8-6), 6-3.
First round: Steve Darcis (Bel) br Blaz Kavcic (Slv) 4-6, 7-5, 6-3.
Doubles (first round): Juan Sebastian Cabal/ Robert Farah (Col) bt Alexander Kudryavtsev (Rus)/ Olivier Rochus 6-4, 6-4.
