January 9, 2021 – Croatian tennis veteran Ivo Karlovic has become the oldest player to win an ATP match since Jimmy Connors in ’95.
24 Sata reports that 41-year-old Croatian tennis player Ivo Karlovic (ATP – 148) won his first game of the new season by defeating Spanish tennis player Pablo Andujar (ATP – 59) 6-3, 5-7, 6-4 in the 1st round match of the ATP tournament in Delray Beach, USA. It took Karlovic two hours and 16 minutes of play to claim the victory.
It was their second match, and Karlovic reached his first victory by firing 27 aces, and winning three of nine breakpoints, one in each set.
In the second round, Karlovic will face 28-year-old Ecuadorian Roberto Quiroz (ATP – 293), who advanced to the tournament through qualifications. In the 1st round, he was better than American player Noah Rubin (ATP – 251) 7-6 (1), 6-3.
Karlovic had a decisive break in the eighth game of the first set and realized the third set point in the next. Andujar took a 2-0 lead in the second, but the Croatian veteran immediately came back. The 34-year-old Spaniard managed to take the match to the third set with a new break point in the 12th game.
With a break point in the fifth game of the decisive set, Karlovic gained an advantage that he kept until the tenth game in which he used his second match point.
Ivo Karlovic won the title at this tournament in 2015, defeating American Donald Young in the final, and five years earlier, he was defeated in the final by Latvian Ernests Gulbis.
This is the 23rd season of Ivo’s career, and at its opening, he became the oldest player with an ATP tour win since Jimmy Connors in 1995.
“It’s true almost every match that I win, now at my age, it is history,” Karlovic said after the victory.
Karlovic will play in the round of 16 on Sunday against Roberto Quiroz.
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