Leonardo Mayer beat Florian Mayer 6-4 4-6 6-3 to win his second German Open Tennis Championship. The win also means for a second week in a row a lucky loser wins an ATP World Tour title.
The first serve was the key to victory for the Argentinian as he served 70% of first serves to dictate play and use his forehand to good effect. His shot selection was much better than his funky and unique opponent as he picked apart the German. The duo who are unrelated shared breaks in games six and seven as both temporarily struggled on serve. However Florian was struggling with the pace and accuracy of the one handed backhand of Leonardo and on his second set point the lucky loser took full advantage as he won the first set in 35 minutes.
The second set was even tighter the first set as Florian won 21 of his 25 first service points in the second set. The Argentinian who was ranked 138 before the tournament had six break points in the second set in the sixth game but couldn’t take advantage. Leonardo could sense the match had gone in the second set and was made to pay for his attitude as he was broke in the ninth game to 15. The German closes the set out to level the match up.
However the Argentinian rebooted in the final set and returned to his serving best in the final set. As Florian was getting more tired, Leonardo increased his accuracy of shots to increase the pressure on the 33 year old’s serve. The German’s shot selection came back to haunt him in the eighth game as Leonardo broke for a 5-3 lead. The Argentinian wrapped up the match in just under two hours to seal his second ATP World Tour and Hamburg title.
The win also created history as it is the first time that the ATP World Tour will have two Lucky Losers winning titles in consecutive weeks, this is after Andrey Rublev won the Umag title last week as a lucky loser. Both men will move inside the World’s top 100 on Monday.
