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Haas still hungry for success


 

Originally published on: 03/06/12 00:00

Few players have had their careers as regularly interrupted by injury as Haas, who is now No.112 in the world rankings, but he demonstrated his continuing appetite for the game by battling through the qualifying tournament at Roland Garros. It was the first time in his career that he had played in the qualifiers at a Grand Slam tournament.

Having reached the main draw by winning three matches, Haas went on to beat Filippo Volandri and Sergiy Stakhovsky before his run was ended in the third round by Richard Gasquet, who won the last 14 games to triumph 6-7, 6-3, 6-0, 6-0. “I don’t actually want to admit it, but it's the second time on the same court,” Haas admitted afterwards. “It was the same thing against [Nikolay] Davydenko [in 2005]. It was 5-5 in the first and then I lost 5_ѥ7, 0_ѥ6, 0_ѥ6.”

Nevertheless, Haas said that the tournament overall had been “a good experience” and welcomed the fact that he should soon return to the top 100. Asked why he had entered the qualifying tournament, he said: “Well, it's a Grand Slam, so you have to basically tell yourself these are the tournaments you want to play. That's why I decided to come here and play qualifying, which was obviously not easy leaving home with my family.  But once you make up your mind, you do it.  And the main goal was to try to qualify for this event. I'm really happy with the last two weeks with the result, getting to the third round.”

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Tim Farthing, Tennishead Editorial Director & Owner, has been a huge tennis fan his whole life. He's a tennis journalist and entrepreneur as well as playing tennis to a national standard. He also helps manage his local club and volunteers for his local tennis organisation. He's a specialist in content about the administration of professional tennis and tennis coaching for all levels.