Second seed Taylor Fritz of the United States demolished Ilya Ivashka of Belarus 6-1 6-2 to move into the semifinals of the Geneva Open on Thursday. The lopsided contest was over in under an hour and a half, as Fritz dismantled his opponent with his accurate tennis. He will take on Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria in the semifinal on Friday.
Taylor Fritz Destroys Ilya Ivashka in Geneva
Ivashka tried to direct traffic towards Fritz’s backhand:
Right from the very beginning, Ivashka played a lot of his shots towards Fritz’s backhand to prevent the latter from dictating terms with his powerful forehand. However, Fritz did not try to force issues and adopted a clinical approach.
He kept keeping the ball on his opponent’s court without taking much risk or going for extravagant shots. There were a lot of crosscourt backhand exchanges between the two in the first set.
However, Ivashka suffered a lot because of his sluggish movement, as he had trouble covering the court for the most part. Fritz took advantage of that and broke him twice to win the first set with ease.
Taylor Fritz controlled the second set with his forehand:
Fritz played his inside-out forehand more often as the match progressed. He thus took control of the proceedings with his forehand, just like he did against Marcos Giron in his last match.
The 25-year-old American also played drop shots sporadically to drag Ivashka to the net. Ivashka struggled to get to the ball on most of those occasions as Fritz broke him twice more in the second set to race to a 4-0 lead. Ivashka then held his serve, but Fritz had no problem serving the match out. In the end, it was a quite easy win for the American, who looks good to end his title drought in Geneva.
Main Photo Credit: Susan Mullane-USA TODAY Sports
