Third seed Felix Auger-Aliassime of Canada beat Gregoire Barrere of France 6-4 6-3 in the second round of the ABN Amro Open in Rotterdam on Thursday. The 22-year-old Canadian will face Daniil Medvedev of Russia in the quarterfinal on Friday.
The match was over within a couple of hours on Thursday, as Felix Auger-Aliassime proved to be too powerful for the Frenchman. We will now take a look at how the match progressed:
Auger-Aliassime served quite a few cannonballs to stun Barrere:
Auger-Aliassime served with venom on Thursday, with his first serve bothering Barrere consistently. The Canadian dished out quite a few thunderbolts to leave his opponent shell-shocked.
The Canadian went a break up in the sixth game of the first set, but committed a couple of silly unforced errors to be broken in the ninth. However, Auger-Aliassime then broke Barrere once again in the 10th game to win the set.
The Canadian won 78% of the points on his first serve in the match against a Barrere’s modest 55%. That proved to be a major difference in the end.
Barrere did not have the weapons to hurt Auger-Aliassime:
Barrere’s ground strokes did not have enough power to trouble the Canadian consistently. The Frenchman relied a lot on the angled shots to move Auger-Aliassime from side to side. However, the Canadian’s swift movement and solid defense made him stay in the point on most occasions.
Auger-Aliassime unsettled Barrere primarily with his inside-out forehand. He hit a few of those shots wide, but, in general, that was his effective shot. The Canadian was aware of the fact that his backhand was not his strongest shot. Hence, he played a lot of backhand slices to alter the tempo of the rally and thereby buy enough time to set up his blistering inside-out forehand.
Main photo credit: Mike Frey USA Today
