Associated Press<\/p>\n
AUCKLAND, New Zealand<\/a> (AP) \u2014 Third-seeded Jakub Mensik<\/a> served 18 aces Saturday on his way to a 6-3, 7-6 (7) win over Sebastien Baez in the final of the ATP<\/a> 250 tournament in Auckland.<\/p>\n The 20-year-old from the Czech Republic, ranked 18th, saved three set points in the second-set tiebreak to claim his second ATP Tour title. <\/p>\n He now heads to the Australian Open in which he will play Spain’s<\/a> Pablo Carreno Busta<\/a> in the first round. Baez, who beat top-seeded American Ben Shelton in the quarterfinals in Auckland, will play Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard<\/a> in the first round in Melbourne,<\/p>\n Mensik breezed through the first set in 31 minutes with 11 aces and served for the second set at 6-5. But Baez broke him for the first time in the match and led 6-3 in the tiebreak before Mensik won three straight points.<\/p>\n Mensik gained his second match point with his 18th ace, then took the final point off Baez’s serve to seal the match.<\/p>\n \u201cI would say it has been a great start of the year,\u201d Mensik said. \u201cObviously, I’m super happy after the preparation and pre-season. Seb is a great fighter. It’s difficult to hit a winner against him.”<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n AP tennis: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/tennis<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Associated Press AUCKLAND, New Zealand (AP) \u2014 Third-seeded Jakub Mensik served 18 aces Saturday on his way to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170775,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,46,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-242637","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242637\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}