Mark Lajal beats big-serving Ethan Quinn to reach Stockholm main draw
Estonian tennis player Mark Lajal has qualified for the ATP Stockholm Open main draw after beating Ethan Quinn (US) 3:6, 6:4, 6:4 in qualifying.
Lajal had beaten Japan's Rei Sakamoto, ranked 188th in the world, in straight sets in qualifying round one.
Lajal, 22, ranked 146th in the world, got off to a slow start in losing the first set to Quinn, ranked 74 places above him by the ATP and top qualifying seed, and was soon 3:1 in games in set two.
Then came the dawn: The Estonian broke Quinn's serve twice in a row, dropping only one more game and taking the set 6:4 to take things to a decider.
The breakthrough came in game five of that deciding set when Lajal again managed to break Quinn's serve, which was sufficient once the Estonian held on to his own serve thereafter.
Quinn served up as many as a dozen aces, but fluffed his second service, winning only 39 percent of the points on that serve compared with 65 percent for Lajal.
Lajal next faces world number 58 Tomás Martín Etcheverry in round one proper. The pair have never met competitively on court before.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte, Siim Boikov
