O’Brien set to face Mecir Jnr
By ending the title hopes of Malta’s Matthew Asciak 7-6 (7/4) 6-2 at the Fitzwilliam Club last night, Dubliner O’Brien now faces the No 2 seed, Slovakia’s Miloslav Mecir, in the quarter-finals of the ITF Futures world-ranking event.
World No 397 Mecir’s father, also Miloslav was an outstanding player during the 80s, capturing the singles gold medal in the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
He reached two major finals, the final of the US Open in 1986 and the final of the Australian Open in 1989, losing to fellow Czechoslovakian Ivan Lendl on each occasion.
In addition, he achieved a career-high place of No 4 in the world rankings in February 1988.
This year, Mecir has taken the scalps of two top 100 players. So Irish No 4 O’Brien will really have to be on his game if he is to end the title hopes of the Slovakian right-hander.
Clearly, the 647-ranked Malahide left-hander will be hoping to improve on his performance early on in his match against 20-year-old Asciak, who is down at 924 in the world rankings.
In the opening set, O’Brien struggled consistently with his timing and his accuracy, and Asciak gave as good as he got until the home player shaded the tie-break.
But early in the second set O’Brien began to find a decent rhythm, and he managed to break his opponent on two occasions before comfortably closing out the match.
No 5 seed James McGee also booked a place in the last eight, seeing off the American qualifier James Ludlow 6-3 6-2.
However, Barry King and Daniel Glancy bowed out. After a three-hour marathon on Tuesday night against Britain’s Burnham Alridge, King succumbed 7-5 1-6 7-6 (7/0) to Italy’s No 7 seed Andrea Falgheri. And Glancy, who shocked top seed Josh Goodall on Tuesday, suffered a 1-6 6-4 6-2 defeat by Britain’s Daniel Cox.
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