Mili Poljicak, the former youth champion of Wimbledon (2022), comes from Croatia and was the opponent of the Dutchman Jesper de Jong in the first round. It needs no further explanation that the support from the crowd was directed towards the Croatian. De Jong remained extremely calm under the circumstances. Even when Mili believed that Hawk Eye was disadvantaging him with an incorrect call. The Croatian found it hard to accept and debated long with the referee. During the change-over, he continued to express his complaints and even the ATP supervisor Gerry Armstrong came onto the court to participate in the conference. If Hawk Eye indeed made a mistake, Mili indicated to the referee later that this had happened twice, which does happen sometimes, but not often, is of course very annoying. But at Mili, the complaint took a very long time, and if he hadn’t been Croatian, the mood of the audience would likely have turned against him.
For Jesper, this meant that several times he had to wait a long time before the game could continue. He handled it very calmly and professionally. Probably, ‘lingering’ in the incident was mostly detrimental to Mili himself. The man from Haarlem continued unabated with very varying strokes, making good use of the slightly lesser mobility of the Croatian. The Haarlemmer continued undisturbed with very varying strokes, making good use of the slightly inferior mobility of the Croatian. His placement, dropshots, and lobs were very successful, and by the end of the match, he even received a resounding applause from the tennis-loving audience for a perfect execution of the combination of those strokes. It resulted in a victory in straight sets: 6-3, 6-3. This continues De Jong’s good play, as he played for the win of that tournament last Sunday in Bastad, Sweden. He didn’t succeed then, but who knows how far he can go in Umag.
Another Croatian who was also granted a wild card to enter the tournament reached the second round, as Dino Prizmic managed to defeat the Dane Elmer Moller with 6-4 and 6-2. The qualifier Pablo Llamas Ruiz also advances and is already in the quarter-finals, having won his fourth match in a row. This time the victim was the Frenchman Terence Atmane (6-3, 6-3). Atmane must have a good racket sponsor, because when things are going poorly, his racket has to pay the price, often with fatal consequences for that racket. The Italian Francesco Passaro did manage to win the first set in the tiebreak against the Argentine Camilo Ugo Carabelli, but the next two sets went to the Argentine (6-7(5), 6-2, 6-3). Below is a photo collage of the matches.
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