(May 25, 2013) Juan Monaco beat Jarkko Nieminen 6-4, 6-3 on Saturday to win the inaugural Power Horse Cup in Duesseldorf for his first ATP Tour title of the year. It’s the Argentine’s eighth career title.
The Duesseldorf ATP event, replaced the World Team Cup.
For Monaco, this was a good warm up for the French Open which begins on Sunday.
“It’s the best preparation,” Monaco said. I’ve had a great week here, playing a couple of good matches. Especially today I played really well. So I will look forward to keep playing this way in Paris.
“It’s like playing at home in Tandil. I played club tennis here in 2006 and 2007, then I played the World Team Cup two times and we were champions and finalists. There must be something here! I feel very good every time I go on centre court, I feel something special. With this victory today, it’s even more special.”
“We both played pretty well,” Nieminen said. I felt I played my best match of the week, but it wasn’t enough today. I had some chances: he was serving for the [first] set and I had 0/30, I lost a 40/15 lead in the first game of the second set and in the last two games I had chances. He was always there to take his chances. Unfortunately, he played really well today.
“It would have been nice to win the whole thing here, but I made a final on clay for the first time in 10 years. That’s pretty cool for me. My body feels good going into Paris.”
Monaco is the third Argentine winner on the ATP World Tour this year, joining Juan Martin del Potro who captured Rotterdam and Horacio Zeballos who topped Rafael Nadal for the Vina del Mar crown.