Young Canadian Vasek Pospisil has reached his first quarterfinals of the ATP Tour by defeating veteran American Michael Yani in straight sets 6-3 7-5 today at the Malaysian Open. The Canadian survived 5 breakpoints in the match and fired 9 aces on his way to a superb victory. He managed to take Yani’s serve once in each set, closing out the match in 1 hour and 50 minutes.
Meanwhile, Frenchman Julien Benneteau got his revenge against Australian Matthew Ebden who beat him at the Indian Wells Masters 2012. Seventh seeded Benneteau could fully rely on his serve in today’s match, losing only 6 points after his first serve found it’s mark and breaking his opponent 4 times alltogether. Ebden’s handicap was his second serve, winning just 29% of the points played. Benneteau advanced to the quarterfinals in 74 minutes with a 7-5 6-2 win.
In the remaining first round match, fifth seeded Spaniard Feliciano Lopez made a succesful debut in Kuala Lumpur, overcoming Slovakian Lukas Lacko in straight sets 6-3 7-6 (3). Left-hander Lopez main weapon – his serve – wasn’t at it’s best as he fired 5 aces but double-faulted 5 times too. However, Lacko missed many chances to break the Spaniard (just 1 out of 6) and finally surrendered his own serve three times.
To see all our predictions for upcoming matches, based on our machine learning model analysing results since 1960, see our tennis predictions page here.
