Tennis professional Jan-Lennard Struff made it into the second round of the ATP tournament in Monte Carlo. The 33-year-old from Warstein won his opening match against Argentinian Sebastian Baez 1:6, 7:6 (7:3), 6:2. In the round of the best 32, the Davis Cup player will face the winner of the game Alexander Bublik (Kazakhstan) against Borna Coric (Croatia).
After clearly losing the first set, Struff was already 2:5 behind in the second round, but fought his way into the tiebreak, which he ultimately won. In the third set the German was clearly the better player.
“It was a brutally difficult match,” said Struff afterwards on Sky. In the first two sets he “wasn’t so mentally positive,” said the 26th in the world rankings: “Then I fought my way in with a push from outside and managed to increase the quality of the game.”
Koepfer separates from a Greek track
Dominik Koepfer from Furtwangen then lost his first round match against the Dutch Tallon Griekspoor 6:7 (2:7), 6:4, 2:6.
After a bye at the start, Olympic champion Alexander Zverev (Hamburg), seeded number five, will only compete on Tuesday in the second round of the clay court tournament, which offers prize money of almost six million euros.
