But Monfils found success on the hard courts in the nation’s capital, capturing his first ATP 500 tournament.
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Both players endured scorching hot temperatures on court as the first set quickly turned into a serving contest. Another volley error from Karlovic ended the Croat’s streak of holding serve at 70 service games.
Karlovic double-faulted five times, including three in his opening service games, but he doubled Johnson’s ace count (14 to seven), won 86 percent of his first-serve points, and saved all five of the break points he faced. Karlovic then closed out the set 7-5 with a smash victor.
Monfils certainly lit up the DC crowd on Sunday.
“For sure in the second set he was really off”, Monfils noted of his opponent.
GENERALI OPEN: Fourth-seeded Paolo Lorenzi missed 12 match points before defeating Gerald Melzer of Austria 7-6 (4), 7-6 (13) on Friday and setting up a final against Nikoloz Basilashvili of Georgia at the Generali Open in Kitzbuehel, Austria.
But Monfils finally had figured how to read Karlovic’s serve. Karlovic smoothly returned a slice backhand low at Johnson’s feet. Karlovic proceeded to double fault to reach 15-40, but the umpire overruled the side linesman to give Karlovic the point to make it 30-30 instead. Just get back up. Karlovic hit a volley just long and that leveled the match at 5-all. Ivo fired 28 aces but his first serve wasn’t always there when he needed it, staying on 60%.
Johnson even won a point in the first tiebreaker by putting in play a 146 miles per hour serve, then lobbing a victor over the 6-foot-10 Isner, who is a three-time runner-up at the tournament, including a year ago. Zverev and Monfils then split the next six games to end up at 5-3 with the first set point opportunity of the match going to the veteran Frenchman. Monfils broke in the third game of the final set and held from there to take the match. At 1-all, Monfils continued hitting low returns that bothered Karlovic.
In the second set, Karlovic broke by delivering back-to-back return winners. Monfils kept up his solid serving and soon found himself at 5-4.
Monfils staved off a match point in the second set en route to his first victory since February 2014 at at Montpellier, France. “We won a couple more big points than they did”. But he admitted the win came down to a few points.
“I love Stevie to death”, he said, “but I don’t think that backhand lob he it I don’t think he could do that all the time”.
“It’s a real pleasure for me”, said Monfils. “Today it was special, but it was like a regular win”.
For Karlovic, the disappointment was evident despite having made his second straight ATP final after Newport last week.
“I’m confident from winning last week”, Karlovic said. “My service stopped at that moment”. “I don’t know what happened”. “I’m not as used up as my age would suggest”. “I could see that the second set was a bit different; it was tougher for him”.
He noted that he was proud to join Arthur Ashe and Yannick Noah as winners in the US capital whose names are etched on the blue awnings around the main stadium.
“I tried to be as aggressive as I could and it paid off”, Karlovic said.
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The 12th-ranked Croat said Thursday on his Facebook page that it was a “huge privilege to work with Goran, I enjoyed our work all this time and Goran helped me to reach many goals”. “Definitely to have my name next to them, it’s priceless”.
