Photo: Ron C. Angle
After another day to overcome his jetlag, a fresher-feeling Marcos took to the court on Wednesday evening and quickly dismissed Poland’s Lukasz Kubot 6-2, 6-2 to reach the quarter-finals at the Brisbane International.
Marcos raced to a 4-0 lead in the first set and despite relinquishing one of the service breaks, he went on to close out a one-set lead by breaking serve for a third time in the seventh game. At the start of the second set Marcos capitalised on his momentum to break serve straight away and one more break of serve in the fifth game helped him secure victory in 64 minutes.
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“I played pretty good today. I was very aggressive from the beginning of the game and I’m very happy about that. I played some great points,” reflected Marcos.
“I was more fresh [than in the first round]. Yesterday I had a bad start and I lost the first set pretty quickly and had to fight through. Today I was feeling much better on court, faster. I played better, I thought.
On Thursday Marcos will face defending champion and World No. 8 Andy Roddick in the quarter-finals. It will be their first meeting since August 2007, when Roddick won in straight sets at the ATP World Tour Masters 1000 tournament in Canada. The American also won when the pair met at the Internazionali BNL d’Italia in 2006, but it was Marcos who prevailed in their biggest meeting to date, beating Roddick en route to the Australian Open final in 2006.
Marcos vs Roddick: Head-to-Head
“It’s nice to play players like Andy, Top 10 players,” said Marcos. “It’s a testing match before the Australian Open. It will be a great match and it’s nice to go out there and see about my negative things, my positive things, and all the things I need to work on.”
The match will take place on Pat Rafter Arena not before 7pm local time (9am GMT, 11am Cyprus, 4am ET) on Thursday evening. Check out the full order of play here.
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Stay tuned to www.baghdatis.com for all the latest news from Brisbane.
Go, Marcos!
