Hello Riga, this is Stockholm calling

Multiple withdrawals from the If Stockholm Open field have catapulted Ernests into the main draw of the ATP 250 event.

The last-minute pullouts of Ivo Karlovic, Jurgen Melzer and several others allowed Ernests to move up the entry list as an alternate, enabling him to directly enter the main draw without having to play in the qualifying.

His first opponent will be the eighth-seeded Feliciano Lopez of Spain.

Lopez, a lefty whose playing style favours fast indoor hard courts like those in Stockholm, will arrive in Sweden fresh off a brilliant run into the semi-finals of this week’s Shanghai Masters.

However, he had to retire injured in that match after twisting his ankle in the first set, and it is unknown whether he will be fit in time for the Stockholm opener.

Should Ernests make it into the second round, he will frace either Olivier Rochus of Belgium or Swedish wildcard, Andreas Vinciguerra.

Ernests has never played against Vinciguerra before, while Rochus has a one-match advantage after triumphing against him in the Orleans Challenger in 2006, when Ernests was barely a young pup waiting to burst onto the tennis scene.

Seeded to face him in the quarterfinals is Germany’s Tommy Haas, who was also on the Shanghai casualty list after a shoulder injury forced him to retire against compatriot Rainer Schuettler.

Should Haas not feel up to the task, any of the three other men in his section, which includes Jarkko Nieminen, Florent Serra, and Bulgarian prodigy Grigor Dimitrov, will be more than ready to topple him to reach the quarterfinals.

In the upper half of the draw, the top-seeded home hero, Robin Soderling, is expected to make the final.

However, he may be feeling the after-effects of playing a full Asian schedule, and  Juan Carlos Ferrero, as well as aggressive big servers like Benjamin Becker and a recovering Marcos Baghdatis may stand a chance if they were to pull together a consistent performance.

ATP Stockholm main draw

~ by Zahirah on October 18, 2009.