Points won by each set: [ 29-30, 28-37, 38-38 ]
Points won directly behind the serve:
27 % Lopez – 30 of 108
25 % Davydenko – 23 of 92
A good example how H2H sometimes helps. The 27-year-old Lopez [41] began this match having convincingly won all four matches (including one Challenger) against Davydenko, but all of them occurred at the time they both were more or less at the same level, i.e. ranked 30-50 in the world. During the Dubai semifinal, the Russian [5] had already three successful seasons under his belt being a constant Top 10 player, nonetheless he couldn’t again deal with Lopez’s arrhythmic style based on backhand slices & irregular attacks to the net. Really strange match because of two reasons:
– it seemed that Lopez could beat an improved version of Davydenko only serving & volleying very well, but it wasn’t the case
– unless facing Federer, Davydenko was known as a player who was winning sets when he had built a significant advantage in them, however, in that case he blew 3:0* (30/15) & 4:2 leads in the opener and 4:1 (30-all), 5:2, *5:3 (30/15), 5:4 (30/0) in the decider