Tomic Chases Down The Dog In Acapulco

Fifth seed Bernard Tomic overcame a slow start to move into the Abierto Mexicano Telcel final with a 1-6, 6-4, 6-3 win over Alexandr Dolgopolov on Friday. Tomic had not beaten the flashy Ukrainian since the 2012 Australian Open, but reversed the trend to qualify for his first ATP World Tour 500 final.

“Many top players in the world don’t like to play Alex, he is very, very tough,” Tomic said. “Rafa [Nadal] and Novak [Djokovic] say that he is a very difficult player, and you just have to stay with him in the match. His level of play was too good in the first set. So I knew I had to stay with him and take advantage of my opportunities.

“I’ve played well in [ATP World Tour] 250 events and in Grand Slams, but never in 500s,” Tomic noted. “I’m very happy to be in a final now.”

Tomic dropped serve three times in the first set, but fought back to record his fourth win in 10 FedEx ATP Head2Head meetings with Dolgopolov. He is into his fifth ATP World Tour final (3-1) and first since winning in Bogota last year (d. Mannarino). The Aussie will be playing for his fourth ATP World Tour title against either Dominic Thiem or Sam Querrey.

“I hope that Querrey wins,” Tomic said. “Otherwise, I’ll have to play someone I’ve never played in my career. Against Querrey, I’ll have to serve big. Thiem is an amazing player on defence and gets a lot of balls back.”

Dolgopolov had been nearly unplayable on serve coming into the semi-finals, having won 29 of 31 service games in three rounds. He saved both break points faced in the opening set, but dropped serve four times in the next two sets to succumb in one hour and 46 minutes.