{"id":24262,"date":"2020-02-17T21:56:22","date_gmt":"2020-02-18T02:56:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordontennis.com\/?p=24262"},"modified":"2020-03-27T06:55:03","modified_gmt":"2020-03-27T10:55:03","slug":"rio-open-seyboth-wild-davidovich-fokina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/tennis\/2020\/02\/17\/rio-open-seyboth-wild-davidovich-fokina\/","title":{"rendered":"At the Rio Open, Thiago Seyboth Wild and Alejandro Davidovich Fokina Square Off"},"content":{"rendered":"

It began like a regular first-round match. Two young stars battling it out for valuable ranking points and prize money. The crowd, unsurprisingly, were behind the Brazilian Thiago Seyboth Wild, who won the US Open<\/a> boys’ singles title in 2018. The Spaniard Alejandro Davidovich Fokina, who last year played at the NextGen Finals, was cast in\u00a0the role of pantomime villain.<\/p>\n

Tension builds over Spaniard’s tricks<\/strong><\/h2>\n

World #206 Seyboth Wild started the match brilliantly, breaking Davidovich Fokina in the first game of the match, although it took him eight deuces and seven break points to do so. This set the tone for a real battle of a match, and, importantly, got the crowd involved straight away.<\/p>\n

The Spaniard’s game can be quite flashy and spectacular. His heavy use of drop shots began to wind up the Rio natives. Seyboth Wild served for the first set at 5-4 but was broken to love, further gaining the ire of the crowd. This was brought to a head when at a key point in the following game, Davidovich Fokina won a point via the use of an underarm serve.<\/p>\n

Though this is a perfectly legitimate tactic in a tennis match the use of the underarm serve is often frowned upon as a bit of a trick or, at the very least, something to deliberately catch your opponent out. Trying this against a young Brazilian, in Rio De Janeiro, in a night match with high temperatures, was perhaps not Davidovich Fokina’s wisest move.<\/p>\n

Although, the Spaniard did go on to win that first set 7-5. So the tactics clearly worked to get him ahead, but it made him enemy number one on the Rio main court.<\/p>\n

Rio Open crowd makes its feelings known<\/strong><\/h2>\n

For the remainder of the match, the Rio crowd cheered every winner from the racket of their man. They also cheered unforced errors, double faults and anything else that the Spaniard did wrong.<\/p>\n

To his immense credit, Davidovich Fokina again fought back when Seyboth Wild served for the set. Then, at 6-5* the Spaniard found himself with three match points to get out of the arena with a vital victory. The first was saved with a huge net cord. The second was a well-executed one-two punch off the serve.<\/p>\n

But on the third, Davidovich Fokina charged forward to chase down a drop volley and almost dismantled the net, and himself, in the process. His shot was long and he seemed a defeated man, lying, caked in red clay, a tangle of net and Diadora tennis gear.<\/p>\n

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\ud83c\uddea\ud83c\uddf8 Alejandro Davidovich Fokina tuvo match point, se corri\u00f3 todo, pero termin\u00f3 estampado contra la red. <\/p>\n

El brasile\u00f1o \ud83c\udde7\ud83c\uddf7 Thiago Seyboth Wild nivel\u00f3 el encuentro llev\u00e1ndose el segundo set por 7-6 y manda 2-0 en el tercero.<\/p>\n

\ud83c\udfa5: @TennisTV<\/a>pic.twitter.com\/wVk9FzEeh7<\/a><\/p>\n

— Golpe de Tenis (@golpedetenis) February 18, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n