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Costa, Mantilla ousted at Mercedes Cup Posted: Tuesday July 15, 2003 1:03 PMUpdated: Tuesday July 15, 2003 2:45 PM STUTTGART, Germany (Reuters) -- Albert Costa and Felix Mantilla made early exits from the Mercedes Cup on Tuesday on a bad day for Spanish baseliners. Costa, the 2002 French Open champion who fell in the semi-finals in Paris this year, was brushed aside 7-6 6-3 by Czech qualifier Jiri Vanek in a second-round match. The eighth-seeded Spaniard, who was returning from a knee injury that forced him to miss Wimbledon, lost the first set 7-4 in the tiebreak and never recovered. Mantilla, the winner of the Rome Masters in May, had earlier become the first seeded player to exit the Stuttgart claycourt tournament by losing in three sets to Feliciano Lopez in a thrilling all-Spanish battle. The unseeded Lopez survived three match points before taking the decisive tie break 9-7 for a 1-6 6-3 7-6 win. Claycourt specialist Guillermo Coria returned to his favourite surface with a 7-5 6-3 win over Frenchman Paul-Henri Mathieu in the second round. Argentine Coria, the second seed, who had a bye past the first round like all the other seeded players in the draw, stepped up a gear after a tight first set to extend his impressive record on clay this year to 24 wins and five defeats. The gifted baseliner, a semi-finalist at the French Open and the winner of the Hamburg Masters Series, goes on to meet either Spaniard David Ferrer or Ivan Ljubicic of Croatia. Hard-hitting Max Mirnyi of Belarus, seeded 13th, outplayed Spanish qualifier Marc Lopez 6-4 6-3 in a second-round match. Mirnyi faces a potential third-round clash with Spaniard Carlos Moya, the top seed, who plays Germany's Tomas Behrend in his opening match in the tournament on Wednesday. Spain's 17-year-old Rafael Nadal set up a second-round showdown with Chilean Fernando Gonzalez by beating German wild card entrant Philipp Petzschner 7-5 6-1.
Ecuador's Nicolas Lapentti also survived the first round
with a 6-4 6-2 win over Austrian Stefan Koubek.
Copyright 2003 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. |
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