He's played only two ATP World Tour matches but 18-year-old Mikael Ymer has already swept a former Top 10 player. The Swedish wild card dismissed Spaniard Fernando Verdasco 6-2, 6-1 on Tuesday, needing only 70 minutes to eliminate the left-hander from the If Stockholm Open. Ymer impressed the Swedish crowd with poise of a more experienced, higher-ranked player, not what they might have expected from the World No. 549 who made his ATP World Tour debut a year ago in Stockholm (l. to A. Zverev). The right-hander saved all three break points faced and broke Verdasco for the fifth time to clinch the match, his first ATP World Tour victory. Ymer will have a tall task in round two. He...
More than a million points of research. Every Top 100 player. It turns out that player development evolves from playing more points on serve to playing more points returning the further up the Emirates ATP Rankings you climb. An Infosys ATP Beyond The Numbers analysis reveals a hidden element of our sport we have never fully grasped. The majority of the points you want to play are not on your own serve. You want your opponents to go deeper into their service games, where your chances of breaking serve steadily increase. You want to keep your own service games short and sweet. The Infosys Information Platform uncovered that every single player in the Top 10 has played more return points...
Italian Paolo Lorenzi swept his countryman and lucky loser Federico Gaio 6-4, 6-4 on Tuesday to move into the second round at the VTB Kremlin Cup in Moscow. The seventh-seeded Lorenzi will next face another Italian in Fabio Fognini, who improved to 2-0 in his FedEx ATP Head2Head series against Ricardas Berankis by winning 6-1, 6-2 in 58 minutes. Fognini leads his FedEx ATP Head2Head series against Lorenzi 2-1, but Lorenzi won the last time they played, on clay at the Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters earlier this season. Sixth seed Pablo Carreno Busta prevailed against Austrian qualifier Jurgen Melzer 3-6, 6-3, 7-6(2) after two hours and 16 minutes. The Spaniard won 70 per cent of his first-serve points. [ALSO LIKE] In...
#NextGen Kyle Edmund squeaked by Ukrainian Illya Marchenko 7-6(7), 7-6(5) during his European Open debut on Tuesday in Antwerp. The 21-year-old Brit won 67 per cent of his service points and benefitted from 13 Marchenko double faults. Edmund, who's playing at a career-high No. 43 in the Emirates ATP Rankings, will next play second seed David Ferrer, who received a first-round bye. [ALSO LIKE] Argentine Diego Schwartzman survived a tight contest as well, beating seventh seed Nicolas Mahut 7-6(2), 7-5. Schwartzman converted all four of his break points and will play #NextGen star Taylor Fritz or Belgian wild card Joris De Loore in the second round. Romanian qualifier Marius Copil recorded only his fourth tour-level match win of the season...