Baghdatis brushes aside Blake in Rotterdam

MARCOS Baghdatis beat American James Blake 6-4, 6-2 in the opening round of the World Indoor Tournament in Rotterdam last night.

Playing his first match since injuring his shoulder at the Australian Open last month, the Cypriot number one overcame Blake’s challenge in just over an hour.

In the first set both players held serve until the seventh game when Blake gifted Baghdatis three break opportunities by hitting three successive forehands out.

Baghdatis converted on his second attempt with a forehand crosscourt passing shot to take a 4-3 lead.

He served the set out with Blake hitting a backhand return long to surrender the advantage.

The Cypriot then built on his momentum in the second set as he raced into a 3-1 lead.

A rifling backhand passing shot up the line earned him another break point in the fifth game and he made no mistake, secured a 4-1 lead as Blake sent a forehand wide.

Baghdatis served well throughout the match, winning 83 percent of points on his first serve in the process of setting up a second round clash with Nikolay Davydenko of Russia.

The Russian world number six who has been in blistering form over the past few months, defeating both Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, made light work of last week’s SA Tennis Open champion Feliciano Lopez of Spain with an identical scoreline of 6-4, 6-2 in his first round encounter in Holland.

Baghdatis holds a 2-1 advantage in the head-to-head record against Davydenko, but this will be their first meeting since 2007.

After losing to Davydenko at the 2006 Sony Ericsson Open, Baghdatis defeated the Russian in the fourth round of Wimbledon in 2007 and later the same year at the BNP Paribas Masters in Paris.

Cypriot number two Photos Kallias meanwhile will feature at the Spain F6 Futures in Cartagena scheduled for next week on a clay court.

Kallias is still looking for his first win of 2010 after being eliminated in the first rounds of both the Spain F3 and Spain F4 Futures.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.