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Pedro Cachin of Argentina beat Albert Ramos-Vinolas of Spain 3-6, 6-0, 7-5 in the final of the 2023 Swiss Open in Gstaad on Sunday, July 23. It was a maiden ATP singles title for the unseeded Argentine, who bounced back from a set down to get the better of Ramos-Vinolas.
The match lasted around three hours, as 28-year-old Cachin fought his way to victory. On that note, let us take a look at two things that stood out in the match:
#1. Ramos-Vinolas dominated with his forehand in the first set, as Cachin supplied him with short balls
Albert Ramos-Vinolas made a great start to the match, breaking Pedro Cachin in the third game and then holding his serve to go 3-1 up. He then broke the Argentine once again in the ninth game to win the first set convincingly and thereby go one up.
Throughout the first set, Cachin kept providing the 35-year-old Spaniard with short balls, which the latter dispatched mostly with his forehand from the mid-court. Ramos-Vinolas hit a number of forehand winners in the set to assert his supremacy in the match and took the Argentine by surprise.
#2. Pedro Cachin raced through the second set and also won the third by altering his tactics
From the second set onwards, World No. 49 Cachin started playing his shots a lot deeper and robbed Ramos-Vinolas of the chance to play his forehands with equal ease. His deep shots pushed the Spaniard further behind the baseline and forced the latter to commit more mistakes.
Cachin broke the World No. 65 thrice in the second set to serve him a bagel and came back into the match in a resounding manner. He continued his good work in the third set to go 2-0 up, but Ramos-Vinolas broke back to level the score at 5-5. However, Cachin broke him once again in the 11th game before serving out the match.
The Argentine’s down-the-line forehand from the deuce court won him a lot of points in the last two sets. He mostly played the shot after having pushed the Spaniard into the latter’s backhand corner. It was a closely-fought match overall, but Cachin did just about enough to scrape through in the end.
Ramos-Vinolas was able to win only 32% of the points on his second serve in the match, while Pedro Cachin managed a far better 64%. That proved to be the decisive difference.
