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Monte Carlo
First up for Mehul was one of the more dangerous young-ish floaters, Thiago Herrera. Their only clay meeting was at the end of last year in the WTC playoffs. This time it was closer, and he only narrowly avoided an opening upset, 6-7(2), 6-1, 7-5. 20th-ranked Anton Grimaldo of Argentina provided a similar challenge in the next round. It looked like Grimaldo might get the better of him as he served for the first set at 5-4 ... but picked the wrong time to hit a cold stretch and Mehul reeled off a shocking stretch of seven games in a row to take the match!
Then it was 13th seed John Condon(Phillipines), whom Mehul hadn't played since juniors, winning their only meeting there. Condon is an extreme clay specialist, but overplays a lot and was a bit tired coming in. He's got a fine serve, but hasn't spent nearly enough time on his baseline game. After losing a tiebreak, Mehul dominated the last two sets to advance once again.
Suddenly Anil Mehul found himself in the semifinals, a completely stunning turn of events. He was a bit fatigued at this point himself; I didn't expect to make it nearly this far, but with Benda not playing this week and Hogue getting knocked out early, the path was cleared a bit. That fatigue showed against David Almagro, who rallied after a bad first set to win 1-6, 6-2, 6-3. Still, it was a strange and very successful week: any of the the first three matches could easily have been losses, and they were exactly the kinds of wins that are needed for Mehul to have a good clay season. The chances of that are now much higher; this is his best clay result of his career to date, and the points yield is more than he got from all three clay Masters combined last year.
It'll now be a couple of weeks off before Rome & Madrid, where he'll try to at least keep up the trend of taking out the lower-ranked challengers.
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