DAVYDENKO STARTS WITH UKRAINIAN

Kafelnikov’s countryman, Nikolay Davydenko, will lock horns with Alexandr Dolgopolov of Ukraine in the second round of the Sony Open tomorrow.

In his first round match, Davydenko had defeated Paolo Lorenzi of Italy. That was pretty unusual sort of a match. In the first set, Davydenko completely outclassed Lorenzi and then, Lorenzi did the same to the Russian player in the second set. In the decider, Davydenko was again back on fire and registered a bagel to finish off the encounter. The final score line was 6-0, 2-6, 6-0 in Davydenko’s favour.

On the other hand, Dolgopolov has not played a match in the tournament so far. He is a seeded player, so, he got a bye in the opening round.

These two players have faced each other a couple of times before and in both those matches, Davydenko was the winner. That would definitely be playing in Dolgopolov’s mind. He would like to avenge those earlier two losses.

Dolgopolov is currently at the 22nd position in the world rankings. He would like to make it to top 20 again by putting up a decent show in this tournament.

Dolgopolov was in top 20 last year. He was at no. 13 which is his highest career ranking. But, he couldn’t perform that well in the last season and as a result of that, he slipped down in the rankings and currently, he is out of top 20.

Davydenko’s world ranking is lower than that of Dolgopolov.  The Russian player is currently at no. 46. He was once the no. 3 player in the world, but, because of the inconsistent performances over the years, his ranking has come down.

However, Davydenko has a lot more experience than Dolgopolov and that makes him the favourite in tomorrow’s match.