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Garcia-Lopez caps off fabulous week with gutsy win

Guillermo Garcia-Lopez took his fantastic form from his semi-final against Rafael Nadal into the final with Jarkko Nieminen © Getty Images

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• Profile: Guillermo Garcia-Lopez | Andrey Golubev | Mikhail Youzhny

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Guillermo Garcia-Lopez battled past a determined Jarkko Nieminen 6-4 3-6 6-4 to win the Thailand Open and claim his first title of the year.

The world No. 53 needed all the heart he had shown during his stunning triumph over Rafael Nadal in the semi-finals to outlast his stubborn opponent.

Garcia-Lopez broke in the seventh game of the first set, producing a ridiculous drop-shot to stun the Finn.

Nieminen proceeded to unleash a host of backhand winners at the start of the second set to overwhelm the unseeded Spaniard.

The deciding set saw both men push the boundaries, with neither player ready to take a backward step. Nieminen, supposedly the fresher of the two due to his peerless 6-3 6-2 win over Benjamin Becker in the semis, used all his reserves to take the match to the wire.

At 5-4 down he showed courage to save multiple match points, though the eventual outcome was foreseeable. A weak serve was given the full treatment by Garcia-Lopez as he capped a magnificent week by securing the second title of his career.

Meanwhile, at the Malaysian Open, Mikhail Youzhny shrugged off fatigue to come from a set down to defeat Andrey Golubev 6-7(7) 6-2 7-6(3) in the final.

The 28-year-old, who was taken to three sets in all four of his matches this week, showed unbelievable powers of recovery to claw his way back from the early disappointment of losing the first to win a titanic tussle and claim his seventh ATP World Tour title.

"It was four very tough matches for me," he said. "It was my first tournament indoors after the US Open Series and for me it was good. I cannot say I showed by best tennis here, but, although it's good when you show your best tennis and win the tournament, it's probably better sometimes when you don't show your really best game but you have a really good result."

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