Austria’s Jurgen Melzer, suffering with a broken big toe on his right foot capped a week in Memphis by winning the tournament over last year’s finalist Canadian Milos Raonic 7-5, 7-6(4).
Melzer broke his toe ten days ago when he caught his foot in a hotel bedspread. His broken toe did not stop him from taking out three of the tournament’s top four seeds, including John Isner, Radek Stepanek and Raonic.
“Of course it’s a relief to win a tournament, especially a [ATP World Tour] 500; I haven’t won one before. After a tough season last year, it’s obviously something nice. I played a really good match today, I kept my head in the game. I knew it was tough. He’s probably the best server on tour at the moment. Sometimes you just walk left to right without doing anything, but I felt like when the ball was in play and when I had my chances, I played really solid.”
“After the match against John [Isner], I felt this could be my tournament because I’ve been really playing well and things have been going together. I’ve been going for lines when it was important and especially the big points I’ve been playing well the whole tournament. This is confidence, this is what you need. In the end, it’s one or two points and I’ve played those better than the other guys this week.”
“He neutralized my serve better than anybody else the last two weeks, so a big part of it is getting a lot of free points to not getting that many,” Raonic said. You have one mentality set on why the free points aren’t coming, like the last few times, and that was pretty much all due to credit to him. I just didn’t catch on early enough, I felt.”
“There wasn’t really much I could do a lot of times in the matches. He was pretty much taking it to me. I felt like he was the one dictating more than I was, so he was taking that away from me. He was playing very close and inside the line, while I felt I was quite far behind, so I was the one doing most of the running.”
World No. 38 Melzer became the first 30-year-old to take the Memphis title since Ivan Lendl did it in 1991. Memphis marks Melzer’s fourth career ATP World Tour title.
RESULTS – SUNDAY, 26 FEBRUARY, 2012
Singles – Final
J Melzer (AUT) d [4] M Raonic (CAN) 75 76(4)
Doubles – Final
[1] M Mirnyi (BLR) / D Nestor (CAN) d I Dodig (CRO) / M Melo (BRA) 46 75 10-7