Nieminen progresses into quarter-finals at Sopot

Jarkko Nieminen

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Jarkko Nieminen overcame Spain's Nicolas Almagro in the second round of the Idea Prokom Open in Sopot, Poland on Thursday afternoon.
      The Spaniard, who is 83rd in the ATP Entry Rankings, proved to be a real handful, and Nieminen (ATP-54) had a tougher time of it than in his impressive opening round win against top seed Mariano Puerta. The match could have gone either way, and lasted nearly two hours.
      The Finnish left-hander was outplayed in the first set and went down 6-3, but clawed his way back to break his opponent twice in an evenly-balanced second set (6-4). Nieminen had one break at 3-1, but Almagro recovered to even the score before Nieminen broke again at 5-4.
      The third set went with service for the first four games, before Almagro broke and held, putting himself into a 5-3 lead. Nieminen hung on to hold and break back to 5-5 and the game then went all the way to the tie-break, which Nieminen edged 8-6.
     
The reward is a quarter-final meeting with the 22-year-old German Florian Mayer (ATP-95), who upset 5th seed Filippo Volandri of Italy in straight sets. The two players have not met before.
      Nieminen has already collected 8 ATP Champions Race points and around EUR 12,000 in prize money in Poland, but he will be eager to progress to a semi-final meeting with either clay court specialist Guillermo Coria (Argentina), or Igor Andreev of Russia.
      Coria, who is arguably the strongest player in the tournament despite his being seeded only No.3, has beaten Nieminen in both their previous encounters (once on clay), and Andreev (the 7th seed here) dumped the Finn out of the second round of this year's French Open in Paris.


Links:
  Idea Prokom Open

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