Monday, August 19, 2013

Carreno Busta edges past Gregoire Burquier for his 10th title of the season




It hasn't been a great quality final the one that took place last night in the ATP Challenger of Cordenons, both athletes didn't play their best tennis, which was a shame considering the great tennis both showed in their way to the final.
French player, Gregoire Burquier started the match with a lot of tension, he knew his opponent wasn't going to give him free points, so he had to be aggressive and take him by surprise with sudden acceleration and other variations, but those attempts at first were all due to end up with errors. After the match he would indeed said: "I didn't play my best tennis, I don't know maybe because it's a final and maybe because it's him, I know he won a lot of tournaments and I was a bit afraid of him and only in the end I saw that I could play well, but it was too late, you know, he's very solid, so I needed my best tennis to win"
On the other side of the net, the hot-form Spanish seemed to struggle finding the right null and hence his gamed lacked of a true aggressive mindset for most of the first and part of the second set. 
"It was difficult" said Carreno Busta at the end of the match, "it's strange because I think I played bad, not my best tennis, he played very nervously, so it was really strange"
Yet this was quite enough because Burquier was too erratic and his winners couldn't fully make up for the errors. The first set ended 6 games to 4 for Carreno, but despite the close scoreline, it didn't really seem he could lose this match.
The second set started with a good reaction from Gregoir, who took a break lead in the first game and hold for 2-0, but once again his level couldn't keep up and Carreno Busta immediately broke back. On 3-all Burquier clearly started to feel the moment and got broken from 30-0 with four unforced errors in a row. The break gave Carreno Busta the right boost of confidence to finally try to go more for his shots and that gave the final a last taste of quality, because contrary to the public expectations, Burquier finally started to play his game and the last few games were the best of the match. Nonetheless Carreno Busta could hold in both his service games and close the match with a terrific backhand winner worth of his 10th title of the season, the 3rd Challenger.
For Burquier remains the satisfaction of a good week, despite the bitter loss in this final: "It's been a positive week for me, I had a very difficult season so far, but here I defeated very good players this week and felt my game, so I hope it's another season starting for the next tournaments".
Despite his ranking Carreno Busta won't play the US Open, but will play two more Challengers in Italy in Como and Genova, before going to Asia, he feels quite comfortable about going to the ATP Tour: "I played in Portugal an ATP and reached the Semifinal, so I think I am ready to play with tops" and at the question if he's ready for that on hard courts too, smiling he said "I will try to".

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