Dusan Lajovic from Serbia had a gameplan to fight Atilla Balazs. He did not wanted the Hungarian to be able to play the way he wants to. Dusan watched the previous match of Balazs and saw him scoring many points by producing drop shots and volley’s. In the words of Lajovic ‘a kind of minitennis’. So his plan was to hold him deep behind the baseline and prevent him to come to net. Initially that didn’t worked out so well. Dusan lost a service game and was 3-5 behind in de first set, but he stayed to his plan and managed to break back. He also observed that Attilla’s game was a little bit less intens at the end of the first set. That is not surprising, because he plays a very physical game. He jumps half a meter in the air every time he hits a groundstroke and he’s doing that since the first match in de qualifications, so on a daily base for more than a week. This gave Lajovic the feeling that he could become in control of the match. And so he did. It resulted in a win in straight sets for the Serbian: 7-5, 7-5.
Lajovic, ranked number 36, joked that he now can say to Djokovic that he had done something that Djokovic had never done: winning in Umag (Djokovic played four times (2004-2007) in Umag). Dusan was rewarded with a check from the sponsor, Plava Laguna, kisses form president of Croatia Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović and of course the trophy that was handed over by the president. With a great firework the tournament was ended.
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