Aljaz Bedene’s ranking of 156 is deceptive.
He is no stranger to upsets. Two years back, on an outside court, he ousted Stan Wawrinka in the quarters and then hustled Janko Tipsarevic in the semis. In both matches he showed that he has top-50 potential.
On Thursday, it was second seed Feliciano Lopez’s turn to discover that, as he lost 6-4, 6-4 to the Slovenian qualifier in an hour and 25 minutes to crash out in the second round of the Aircel Chennai Open.
Lopez is one of few practitioners of the art of serve-and-volley. Even on the relatively less hospitable of places — like the slow hard courts in Chennai — the left-hander is more than willing to rush the net. But for his style to succeed the game had to flow from the serve, and against Bedene he just could not get it right.
‘Nothing worked’“Nothing was working for me today,” said Lopez. “My serve-and-volley didn’t.”
“From baseline also I was not moving well. I will work on that part now. Hopefully I will be ready for the (Australian) Open.”
“I was sick last week, but I don’t like using that as an excuse. I was almost 100 per cent ready to play today.”
The World No.14 endured a tough opening phase. Bedene’s murderous inside-out forehand meant that Lopez had to either find success with the body serve or drill it down the ‘T’.
For the first few service games he did neither. Yet, his instinct pushed him towards the net and he found himself poorly positioned, and was routinely passed. The inevitable break came in the third game.
Lopez did show glimpses of how good his serve can be; serving at 2-4, he followed up a body serve with two thunderous ones down the T and one service winner. Unfortunately he never kept at it.
He missed with routine backhand slices and could not quite hit his forehand hard enough, and spent a lot of time remonstrating to himself.
If he had expected his fortunes to turn in the second, he was proved wrong as Bedene broke in the very first game. With that, the Slovenian stepped it up remarkably. In his five service games in the second set, the 25-year-old dropped a mere five points.
The last few exchanges were easy as Lopez seemed to have thrown in the towel. Then, on match-point, a backhand slice found the net, as it had on many earlier occasions.
Earlier, in the first match of the day, Spanish third seed Roberto Bautista Agut defeated Peter Gojowczyk of Germany 6-3, 6-2.
The match was far closer than the scoreline would suggest. The World No. 15 had his serve broken in both the sets, saw his first serve go awry and had trouble with foot-faults throughout.
Bautista Agut did break the German twice in the second set — in the fifth and the seventh games — but it was not before Gojowczyk had held the upper hand.
Ultimately it was the Spaniard’s exemplary placement and depth that saw him through.
In a much-anticipated doubles quarterfinal encounter, Leander Paes and Raven Klaasen beat Mahesh Bhupathi and Saketh Myneni in a match that went the distance.
The top seeds prevailed 1-6, 6-1, 10-7.
The results: Singles: Second round: Roberto Bautista Agut (Esp) bt Peter Gojowczyk (Ger) 6-3, 6-2; Yen-Hsun Lu (Tpe) bt Pablo Carreno Busta (Esp) 6-4, 6-4; Guillermo Garcia-Lopez (Esp) bt Tatsuma Ito (Jpn) bt 6-7 (1), 6-2, 6-0; Aljaz Bedene (Slo) bt Feliciano Lopez (Esp) 6-4, 6-4.
Doubles: Quarterfinals: Purav Raja (Ind) & Adil Shamasdin (Can) bt Bautista Agut (Esp) & Stan Wawrinka (Sui) 7-6 (5), 4-6, 10-4; Pablo Carreno Busta (Esp) & Guillermo Garcia-Lopez (Esp) bt Ricardas Berankis (Ltu) & Mate Pavic (Cro) 6-4, 0-6, 10-4; Raven Klaasen (Rsa) & Leander Paes (Ind) bt Mahesh Bhupathi & Saketh Myneni (Ind) 1-6, 6-1, 10-7.
