Richard had to dig deep in the second round of Doha to beat Grega Zemlja 6-7 6-4 7-6. His next opponent is Lukas Lacko.
A tight first set had to be decided in the tiebreak. After changing advantages, Zemlja was able to take it 9-7. The second set was equally disputed, but Richard was able to break in the ninth game and serve it out for 6-4.While most expected that Zemlja would drop his excellent level of play, the opposite happened, the Slovene broke Richard and went 3-0 up, serving at high percentage with 200 km/h and more as at the beginning. But the final word was not yet spoken. When Zemlja served for the match at 5-3, Richard got to see some second serves and he made use of them, achieving the rebreak with a return winner.
The set went to a breaker in which Richard was impeccable on serve and finally scored a hard fought 6-7 6-4 7-6 victory.