Brazil's Fonseca takes home title at MGM Slam
· Yahoo Sports
LAS VEGAS — You need a warmup event to get ready for Indian Wells?
How about coming to Vegas and play for a million bucks?
The BNP Paribas Open starts Wednesday. It’s considered by many who cover and follow tennis as the sport’s “Fifth Grand Slam.” All the top players are slated to compete in the two-week event at the Indian Hills Tennis Garden.
That includes Taylor Fritz, Tommy Paul and Reilly Opelka. Sunday, all three Americans were at T-Mobile Arena to sharpen their games and try and take some loot home with them en route to California.
The USA trio were joined by Norway’s Casper Ruud, Brazil’s Joao Fonseca, Alexander Bublik of Kazakhstan and veterans Gael Monfis of France and Australia’s Nick Kyrgios.
Opelka, the 28-year-old from Florida, met Fonseca in the best-of-three championship and the 19-year-old Brazilian’s shotmaking and tenacity was too much. He wound up a three-game winner, defeating Opelka 10-6, 7-10, 10-5 and taking home the winners’ share of $300,000.
Mind you, he’s not old enough to gamble any of it in a casino but he could probably afford a nice dinner at one of the Strip’s fine restaurants.
“I think I have a pretty good mentality,” Fonseca said of dealing with the format. “I try to focus my routine and concentrate on each shot. You can’t adjust much. You just go play and focus on that."
Opelka, who made $200,000 as the runner-up Sunday said of the event: “It’s a nice little switch-up. It’s like a mini-vacation before Indian Wells. Playing pressure points like you do in tiebreakers are hard to replicate in practice so it definitely helps get you ready.”
It was a fast-moving format — 10-point tiebreaker, single elimination. And while nobody wants to play catch-up, a 10-point game instead of the usual seven-point tiebreak at least gives you a chance to rally and get back in it.
Such was not the case for Paul. He fell behind 6-1 and Fritz put him away quickly, winning 10-3 to advance to round 2.
“In this kind of format, you don’t want to give your opponent any free points,” Fritz said in his post-match interview.
Fritz met the 6-foot-11 Opelka in the second round after Opelka survived a tough match with Ruud. Opelka had two aces and used virtually every shot in his arsenal to put away the Norwegian star 10-8.
Fritz gave too many points away and found himself trailing 7-4. He got as close as 7-6 but Opelka mixed things up and took the final three points to advance to the championship.
Fonseca won seven of the last eight points in his match with Monfils and defeated the Frenchman 10-6. He met Bublik, a 10-8 winner over Kyrgios. Bublik, who was playing last week in the United Arab Emirates, was able to get out of Dubai before the airspace was closed following Iran’s attack on the UAE, probably didn’t mind losing in the round of 16 at the Dubai Tennis Championships on Feb. 25. It enabled him to leave the Middle East before things heated up.
He was down 5-0 to the Australian before rallying with six straight points and eventually held off Kyrgios to advance.
But he wasn’t as fortunate against Fonseca, who went up 5-0 and won five of the last six points to advance 10-3. Still, it beats having to worry about bombs being dropped on your hotel in Dubai.
“I was unaware of what was happening,” Bublik said. “I was on the plane and then the wifi came on and I saw the news. I had like 25 messages. So I was glad to be able to get out.”
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