Despite being unseeded, 22-year-old Ernests Gulbis of Riga, Latvia, won the 2011 Famers Classic at UCLA, besting top-seeded American Mardy Fish in Sunday’s final, 5-7, 6-4, 6-4. The precocious Gulbis, who advanced to the U.S. Open fourth round in 2007 and quarterfinals at the French Open a year later, dropped the nearly hour-long first set after double-faulting on the set’s final point, before bouncing back to win the second set and instantly break Fish to open the third en route to victory. A week prior in Atlanta, Fish beat John Isner in three sets, after losing in the first set, 3-6, and staving off two match points in a second-set tiebreak. Meanwhile, Gulbis had lost in the first round of four consecutive tournaments; his championship bumped his world ranking from 84th to 55th. In claiming five tournament victories and the $113,000 winner’s check, the 6 ft. 3 Gulbis lost only two sets along the way, dropping one in the final and another against No. 5 seed Xavier Malisse in the first round on Tuesday. In fact, Gulbis nearly collapsed in that match, taking a 6-3 lead in the third set tiebreak before dumping two unforced errors into the net to put Malisse back on serve. At 6-5, the two proceeded to exchange backhands for at least 15 shots, before Malisse finally sent one into the net, leading him to slam and break his racket on the ground in disgust, and delivering Gulbis the opening victory. The two hour, 43 minute final characterized the Classic, which saw solid and close tennis throughout. In the semifinals, Fish defeated 19-year-old American Ryan Harrison, 6-0, 4-6, 7-6; meanwhile, Gulbis defeated American pro Alex Bogomolov Jr., 6-2, 7-6, who won the 2008 Shotgun 21 tournament at Palisades Tennis Center and is currently ranked No. 56 in the world. In fact, pro Michael Russell’who was a finalist at this year’s Shotgun 21’credited Bogomolov with getting him out to the PTC after the two Americans talked about the Shotgun 21s at the ATP event in Atlanta earlier in July. Russell, 33, won his opening match at UCLA against sixth-seeded Dmitry Tursunov of Russia, 6-7, 6-0, 6-2 on the tournament’s first night; 14-year-old Michael Genender of Brentwood, who played Russell a day prior at the PTC, was one of the few people who stuck around Straus Stadium to watch the match. Russell also played doubles with Cyprus’ Marcos Baghdatis and claimed a first-round win, 6-0, 7-6, over alternates Bruno Semenzato and Marcio Torres of Brazil on center court Wednesday night, but lost in the second round. Chileans Nicholas Massu and Fernando Gonzalez were supposed to be the first-round opponents of Russell-Baghdatis, but withdrew. Gonzalez, who had right hip surgery in October and returned in April, didn’t do much else with his time in Los Angeles. The 31-year-old Chilean, who reached No. 5 in the world in 2007 and has over $8 million in career earnings, lost in the first round to Igor Kunitsyn, 6-4, 6-3. He spent much of the match interacting with the typically boisterous and red-clad supporters from Chile’who waived flags and chanted throughout’but could not avoid getting swept by the eighth-seeded Kunitsyn. Another top player returning from surgery faired marginally better, as 6-foot-6 Argentinean and 2008 Farmers Classic champion Juan Martin Del Potro lost in the quarterfinals to Gulbis, 6-2, 6-4. The 2009 U.S. Open winner sat out most of 2010 following a wrist injury and has climbed to No. 20 in the world this year; he did beat exciting American James Blake in a thrilling second-round night match on Wednesday, 6-4. 7-6. It represented something of a renaissance for Blake, who a night earlier, beat Germany’s Michael Berrer, 6-2, 6-3, electrifying the crowd by displaying a go-for-broke style and an array of winners before thanking his supporters and referring to himself as an ‘entertainer.’ Against Del Potro, Blake lived up to that billing again, stringing together a number of ‘How did he do that?’ shots to enthrall the crowd and remind them of his days as a Top 10 player. But Blake couldn’t convert a break chance late in the second, and never led in the second-set tiebreak. In the suspenseful doubles final, Mark Knowles of the Bahamas and Malisse beat Somdev Devvarman of India and Treat Conrad Huey of the Philippines, 7-6, 7-6, with the final set tiebreak ending 12-10.
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