Poor

not a great start for alex. i had thought playing the qualies here may have been better with the strength of the main draw, and it seemed to show as alex wasnt quite up to speed. He couldn't get his serve to work, and 7df's over the 2 sets is way too high, even with 8 aces. i guess the fact he was getting punished on 2nd serves may have been partly to do with this as he went for too much.

he also made too many unforced errors that really made it easier for TA than it should have been, and was perhaps a bit guilty of being too hesitant on putting some shots away allowing TA back into points.

it wasn't 'awful awful' from alex, there were some good points, and the 8 aces shows that when its working his serve can be formidable, but i think it did highlight some areas that Alex needs to work on right now. volleys being one of them.

R1: Bozoljac & J. Delgado [SRB/GBR] beat Klec & Stadler [SVK/GER] 6-4 2-6 10-5

After a dire second set they were 4-2 down in the MTB but then stepped up and played really well to win eight of the next nine points. Delgy went from being the worst player in the second set to the best player in the MTB.

Stircrazy wrote:

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A bit of good news from Heilbronn for a change:  Delgo & his Serb partner, Bozo, have just beaten Ivo Klec & Simon Stadler (SVK/GER) by 6-4 2-6 [10-5].   They will play the top seeds, the Rati Thais, or the all-Croat partnership of Franco Skugor & Ivan Zovko in the QF.

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And the Rati Thais it is:  they won by 3 & 3.

 

Close, but not close enough:  Delgo & Bozo lost by 5-7 6-7(7) after having a number of chances at least to take it to an MTB (they were a break up at one point in the second set, but were pegged back.  They also had break points in the tie-break...  ) & failing to convert them!