Fabio Fognini, Vasek Pospisil, Julien Benneteau, and Mikhail Kukushkin advance to the second round of 2012 Toronto Masters, where they will face seeded players.
For the second time in a row, young Canadian Pospisil made it to the second round here at the Rogers Cup. His Italian adversary Andreas Seppi, however, was close to improve on his last year’s result. He won the first set, but 104th-ranked Pospisil grabbed the other two – the last one after a tie-break – and secured a somewhat surprising 4-6, 6-4, 7-6 (6) victory over World No. 26.
Pospisil’s compatriot Frank Dancevic, 2007 Toronto quarterfinalist, was less successful as he was beaten by Kazakh Kukushkin in two sets. Kukushkin put in a convincing display, not allowing Dancevic a single break point. End result 6-3, 7-5.
French Benneteau and American Wayne Odesnik are separated by more than hundred places on ATP Rankings, that is why Odesnik’s 6-4, 6-4 defeat against experienced Bennetau was quite expected. On the other hand, 31th-ranked French’s best Toronto result is reaching 3rd round back in 2006. We will see whether he can produce anything memorable this year.
Yen-Hsun Lu of Chinese Taipei and Italian Fognini are close neighbors in the rankings and indeed they had a tight encounter in another first round match. It is rare to see a best of three sets match lasting more than three hours. In the end, the Italian won two tie-breaks and converted his second matchpoint for a 7-6 (7), 5-7, 7-6 (5) victory. A week ago, Fognini managed to take a set off Djokovic at the Olympic tournament.
To see all our predictions for upcoming matches, based on our machine learning model analysing results since 1960, see our tennis predictions page here.
