July 15, 2008	Tuesday	Rajab 11, 1429

STUTTGART, July 14: Unseeded Argentine teenager Juan Martin Del Potro upset French second seed Richard Gasquet 6-4, 7-5 to win the Stuttgart Cup claycourt event on Sunday.

The towering 1.95-metre tall world No 65 benefited from some erratic play by the French number one to deservedly clinch his first ATP title.

“I always dreamed as a young boy of winning a tournament, and now I’ve done it it’s just unbelievable,” Del Potro, 19, said in an on-court interview.

“I knew I had to serve well to win, and now I can just enjoy it.”

Del Potro showed resilience and steady nerves in both sets.

After breaking Gasquet early on in each, he was pulled back to level terms in the subsequent games.

Rather than folding, he responded with further decisive breaks against the world No 15 in the penultimate game of each set, serving out to love at the end of the second to wrap up his win.

“For sure I want to congratulate him on his first title,” said Gasquet, a former world No 7 who has gone 10 months since winning his fifth career title in Mumbai last September.

“I remember winning my first title and it’s an important step. I would say he has all it takes to make it into the top five.”

ROBREDO TRIUMPHS

BASTAD (Sweden): Spaniard Tommy Robredo won the second Swedish Open title of his career on Sunday, easily beating Tomas Berdych 6-4, 6-1 after the Czech hurt his knee midway through the opening set.

It was the seventh title for the third-seeded 26-year-old, who beat Russian Nikolay Davydenko in the final two years ago when he reached a career-high fifth in the world rankings.

The pair were evenly matched until fourth-seeded Berdych injured himself when he broke back to 3-3 in the first set and took a time-out to have his knee taped.

Unfazed by the delay, Robredo broke Berdych immediately with a forehand down the line after a poor drop shot by the Czech and then held serve to clinch the set.

In the second, the big-hitting Berdych started looking to finish nearly all the points quickly because of his injury and made far too many mistakes as a result.

Robredo broke the struggling Czech three times in the second set starting with the first game and then to take a 4-1 lead before finishing him off to clinch the title.—Reuters