As the Tournament committee promised yesterday, the match between Viktor Frydrych from the UK and Theo Papamalamis from France was extremely entertaining.
Viktor likes to dominate the exchanges and used his creativity and touch against Theo, who covers the court very well and likes to counter punch his way out of trouble. Viktors discipline and patience gave him the first set 6-3. In the second set, the Frenchman began strongly; he raised the tempo and only made a few unforced errors. It looked like we were going towards a decisive set, but Theo’s nerves gave him some problems and Viktor took advantage of this. The final score of 6-3, 7-5 for Viktor Frydrych, who is based at the Good to Great Academy in Danderyd outside Stockholm.
First-seeded Atakan Karahan from Turkey had to dig deep in his clash with the smaller sized but clever Cypriot Andreas Timini. Andreas played fantastically and showed his wide range of shots; he looked comfortable until 6-3, 5-2 and 30-30. However, Atakan did not give in and showed robust mental strength and stamina. At the end of the second set, both players played incredibly good tennis where they forced the best out of each other. Atakan just about managed to squeeze the set 7-6. The second set loss was too much for Andreas Timini who never recovered, and Atakan Karahan was able to power through the third set 6-1.
Dimitrii Burtsev, Russia (16th seeded) was today’s upset as he hammered his massive and quick baseline game at the 4th seeded player Petr Brunclik from Czech Republic with a 6-2, 6-2 win. Fun to see Dimitrii going strong and it will be interesting to watch him in the quarters against Viktor Frydrych.
Quarterfinalists Kungens Kanna: Sebastien Cauhape, Belgium, Viktor Frydrych, Great Britain, Atakan Karahan, Turkey, Martin Landaluce, Spain, Oleksandr Ponomar, Ukraine, Luca Preda, Romania, Dmitrii Burtsev, Russia and Daniil Sarksian, Russia.