Dubai: Eighth seed Dmitry Tursunov said he wasn’t happy with his game despite beating qualifier Lukas Lacko 7-5, 6-1 in the first round of the Dubai Duty Men’s Open at Dubai Tennis Stadium on Monday.
The 31-year-old Russian world No.29 initially struggled to break down his Slovakian opponent, who is five years his junior and 72 positions below him in the ATP rankings.
The match went with serve until the 12th game of the first set, when Tursunov broke for the opener. Then in the second set Tursunov broke in the fourth and sixth games to secure victory in just over an hour.
“I had quite a few chances to go up two breaks but was making a lot of errors,” said Tursunov. “I don’t think it was a beautiful match in terms of shot making, especially the first set.
“It’s hard to complain when you win, but I think there are quite a few things that I could have done better.”
So far this season, Tursunov has reached the semi-finals in Sydney, followed by second round exits in Melbourne and Montpellier and a first round defeat in Rotterdam. Last year in Dubai he recorded an personal best quarter-final finish.
“I wish that last year’s results guarantee me the same this year,” he said. “But it never works that way.
“I know that I have played a couple of good matches here in the past. If you get through the first couple of matches, you wake up three or four days later and suddenly you find your range and your groove.”
Tursunov will now face the winner of Tuesday’s first round match between Germany’s Daniel Brands and the Czech Republic’s Lukas Rosol in the second round.
“It’s going to be a tough match,” he said. “It sounds cliche, but that’s what it is. I don’t think there are any easy rounds here.
“It’s definitely going to be a lot of big serving and a lot of big hitting from both of them. Hopefully I’ll be able to find a key to break them down.”
But asked of a possible quarter-final clash with five-time Dubai champion Roger Federer, Tursunov remained coy.
“I try not to run too far ahead of myself,” he said. “Maybe first-time players or the press like to do that, but I try not to speculate that far.
“I have a tendency to go in and out focus-wise, so I try to fix that problem by focusing and micromanagement. Let’s talk if I win the second round. Then we can talk about the quarter-finals.”
In another first round men’s singles match on Monday, Spain’s Roberto Bautista-Agut beat Romania’s Adrian Ungur 6-1, 6-3 to progress to a second round match with either No.1 seed Novak Djokovic or Uzbekistan’s Denis Istomin.
Meanwhile, Italy’s Andreas Seppi got the better of Germany’s Florian Mayer 4-6, 6-1, 7-5.
