German Alexander Zverev needs a comeback against Czech Jiri Lehecka to extend his run at the Dubai tournament and get into the second round.
The German tennis player, currently sixteenth in the ATP ranking, won 4-6, 6-3 and 6-4 after two hours and five minutes to add his fourth win in 2023.
Zverev, who has not been able to string together two consecutive wins in the tournaments he has entered this year, the winner of the clash between Finn Emil Ruusuvuori and Australian Christopher O’Connell will face off in the second round.
The victory in Dubai was a revenge for Zverez, who at the end of 2022, in the ‘United Cup’, lost to Lehecka in the only confrontation between the two before this date.
Neither is the debut of Andrey Rublev, second favorite, defeated Serbian Filip Krajinovic, whom he defeated 7-5, 6-2 and will be Alejandro Davidovich’s rival in the round of 16.
Rublev, the sixth player in the world, With this victory, he broke the parity he had maintained with Krajinovic in head-to-head duelsbecause until this Monday they will see two wins in each part, and all in just two sets.
The match, which lasted an hour and a half, saw a Serbian player dominate from the start, managing to take the Russian’s serve in the second game and then leave with a favorable 3-0 score. Krajinovic, at 5-4, served to win the set, but then came the rebirth of Rublev, who scored the next three games, with two breaks of the rival’s service, and with it the first set.
The second featured a superior Rublev, who made it 5-1 after taking Krajinovic’s serve twice. Then, he killed the contest in his favor in the eighth game and with what was his first match point.
In the second round, he was awaited by Davidovich, who a few hours before had comfortably defeated the Tunisian Malik Jaziri445 in the world, by 6-2 and 6-0.
So far, Rublev and Davidovich have met once, with the Russian winning in four sets: Roland Garros 2020, on clay.
In other matches of the day, victories by the Italian Lorenzo Sonego, the Australian Thanasi Kokkinakis, the Dutch Tallon Griekspoor and the Russian Pavel Kotov.
Source: La Verdad
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