Gewo-sponsored player Alvaro Robles from Spain just pulled off the biggest upset of his career in the semi-finals of the Kaisa China Open. He partnered with Ovidio Ionescu of Romania in Men’s Doubles. Together they took down a seasoned pair of China’s best players—Ma Long and Xu Xin. Those two are past World Men’s Doubles Champions and 8-times World Tour Men’s Doubles champions. In singles, these two are respectively ranked #2 and #6.
It is a remarkable accomplishment, especially considering that Robles and Ionescu had never played together before. Their singles ranking by comparison is a lowly #56 and #64. This was clearly the most shocking upset at the China Open. Early on, Robles/Ionescu out-finessed the Chinese pair with a variety of clever drops, flips, precise placements, and opportunistic attacks. After the match, Xu Xin commented that his team had particular problems with effectively receiving serves, an odd comment considering service is considerably less effective in doubles. For his part, Ma Long commented that the play of Robles/Ionescu was different, preventing Ma from playing smoothly.
Some of the most remarkable play came at the last several points in the match where each team out-angled the other team with seemingly more and more severely angled attacks. At 9-9, Xu Xin stepped out to rip a forehand loop crosscourt off a banana flip by Robles that was curving across Xu’s right sideline. On the very next point, Robles short pushed at a severe angle to Xu Xin, who was forced into a awkward step-out and offered up a weak forehand flip that Ionescu then crunched back at the same wide angle, far out of Ma’s reach. The match ended with a crunching Robles sharply angled loop directed off Xu’s left sideline to arrive at match point. And in the last point, Robles backhand sidespin looped a winner off Ma’s short push that rocketed across Xu’s right sideline, again far out of his reach.
If Gewo equipment is good enough for Robles to play at such a high level, then it testifies to the top quality of Gewo’s rubbers and blades. Now’s the time to try out one of the Alvaro Robles blades from Gewo and the Hype XT Pro 50 rubber that he uses.
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