At $1.17M Legg Mason Tennis Classic, Washington DC, USA

[arjun2761]

Good solid win by Somdev! He should be at least an even favorite against Baghdatis in a venue where Somdev generally does well and where he gets signficant Wahoo support.


Hey Arjun-That was my fault for doing the score updates in Somdev's thread originally. I have merged your post into the tournament thread.

[gvhvhg]

Somdev is on court and is making mincemeat of Gremalmayr. Up 3-0 early. I can't seem to find a link for this match, it may not be possible since it is out on Court 2.

4-0 Somdev breaks again
4-1 Somdev gets broken
4-2 Gremalmayr holds
5-2 Somdev holds with ease at love. Important hold. Seems to be serving well; two aces in the game for a total of 5 already!
6-2 Somdev breaks DG for the set! SDV won 28 points as opposed to just 12 for DG. DG is really struggling with his first serve. Only got it in 5 times the whole set, and never won a point on it! Som won 10 points out of 11 when he got his first serve in.

Second set

1-0 Somdev holds at 30. Hits his 6th ace along the way!
1-1 DG holds
2-1 SDV holds at 15
2-2 Relativey long game but DG holds at 30
3-2 SDV holds at love, striking his seventh ace along the way! Come on now Som, enough of trading service holds. Go in for the kill!
3-3 DG holds at 30
4-3 Sommie got in a spot of bother there with one, perhaps two double faults to go down 15-40. But he showed heart and reeled off four straight points for the hold ! BREAK HIM NOW
5-3 Somdev obliges! DG was up 30-0 but then continued to struggle with the first serve, which is at 35% for the match. Time to serve out the match
6-3 Somdev holds at 15. Nice, light, 59 minute work out ahead of his match with Baghdatis that will probably be tomorrow.


[R64] Somdev Devvarman (IND, 65) def. Denis Gremelmayr (GER, 165) 6-2 6-3

which brings up
[R32] (7) Marcos Baghdatis (CYP, 25) vs. Somdev Devvarman (IND, 65)

Somdev of course beat Baghdatis in Indian Wells this year. I'm going to go ahead and pick him to do it again. Baghdatis is too streaky for his own good against Somdev, who rarely fluctuates much in his level of play. And with his home (away from home) crowd behind him in the DC area, anything is possible. Go Som!

[munnabhai]

I think last time Somdev played Baghdatis, Baghdatis was just coming out of some illness. He wasn't 100% the last time, so I would expect this one would be a tougher battle.

[sameerph]

Nice, confident win to start with for Somi. But, the real woek for him starts now with match against Baghdatis tomorrow. He needs to start producing some upsets in this US hard court season now.

[jaydeep]

Very clinical performance by Sommy to comfortable win.

[PKBasu]

Nice start to Buji's campaign in his "home away from home" tournament. I hope the UVa supporters are there in hordes for his next big scalp -- another win over Baghdatis. Go Somdev!

[rajorshi]

Had no idea tha Som was in action! CONGO anyway!!! Way to go in this tournament!

[prassana]

somdev!!!
any live streaming???

[Sandeep]

Very tough matches for both Somdev and Bops. Baghdatis is an overwhelming favourite to win this match, but as we know Baghdatis is a higly unreliable player and he has his worst days more often than not. I hope it is one of those days where he can't find his rhythm. If he is on fire it is going to be impossible to stop him.

Though Bops/Aisam are seeded higher, for me Knowles and Xavier are favourites to win this match. Our team has to play really well to beat them.

[bujilover]

Placing my bets on Buji today.Go for it man.

[cricketics]

O noessssssssss.

I had tickets for tomorrow for the Leg mason. It sucks that I won't be able to see Somdev playe tomorrow.

Though all the best to him. Hopefully he will win tonight.

[gvhvhg]

Can't find a result anywhere. I think the match was delayed/postponed to tomorrow because of rain. I did see they had started though and that Baghdatis had broken Som to start the match

[gvhvhg]

Yeah just called the tournament desk (I can't believe I just had to do this for an ATP 500 tournament!) and they said they're working on a schedule for tomorrow. The match is postponed. They guy I talked to clearly doesn't know as much as he should---he said the match didn't even start. But Somdev's twitter account confirms what I said earlier about him getting down an early break....17 minutes ago Som tweeted "Bad start but no more play for me today, continues tomorrow at noon. Hope to see you out there!"

Hope the bad start wasn't more than a single break!

[gvhvhg]

Also speaking of twitter---I just checked out Baghdatis' page. On March 13th, which is the day Somdev beat him in Indian Wells, he tweeted "Didn't hit a backhand for the past 5 days, my nail of the small finger grew into my skin... Tried to fight but couldn't do anything more." Interesting, perhaps there should be more of an asterix next to Somdev's win in Indian Wells than we thought. Oh well, at least psychologically Som knows he has beaten him. Go Som!

[SaniaFan2]

Somdev down 1-0 in the 1st set,He has not won any points on his serve
Bagdatis leads 1-0 in the 1st set