The first seeded player, the Czech Jiri Lehecka, is out of the tournament. Responsible for this is the Italian Matteo Arnaldi. It did not look like that at the start of the match, because the Italian did not immediately get a grip on Lehecka’s game. Jiri therefore won the first set 6-3, but with the support of the ever-present Italian public in Umag, Arnaldi was the best player from the second set. The Czech scored less with his first service and even had to hand in a number of games on his own service. Arnaldi managed to limit the number of own mistakes and showed Lehecka all corners of the court. He won the second set 6-2. The Czech became visibly frustrated by Arnaldi’s good game. This was evident in his cynical reaction to a referee’s decision. In his opinion, she called a service completely wrongly out at an important moment for him. He stuck his thumb up and walked back to the baseline, applauding demonstratively. It was striking that prior to this incident, Arnaldi also doubted the decision. To the loud applause of the audience, he sided with Lehecka in the conflict with the referee and gave the (important) point to the Czech. Very sporty from Arnaldi, who apparently wants to win, but only with honestly earned points. And he scored enough well-earned points, because despite the ‘giving away’ point, he also won the third set (6-4) and is now in the semi-finals. There he meets the unseeded Australian Alexei Popyrin who knocked out Dino Prizmic, the hope of Croatia. This took quite a bit of effort, because he not only played against Prizmic, but, understandably, also against the audience that was fully behind ‘their’ player. The victory was therefore narrow (7-6 (2) and 7-5.
The first seeded player, the Czech Jiri Lehecka, is out of the tournament. Responsible for this is the Italian Matteo Arnaldi. It did not look like that at the start of the match, because the Italian did not immediately get a grip on Lehecka’s game. Jiri therefore won the first set 6-3, but with the support of the ever-present Italian public in Umag, Arnaldi was the best player from the second set. The Czech scored less with his first service and even had to hand in a number of games on his own service. Arnaldi managed to limit the number of own mistakes and showed Lehecka all corners of the court. He won the second set 6-2. The Czech became visibly frustrated by Arnaldi’s good game. This was evident in his cynical reaction to a referee’s decision. In his opinion, she called a service completely wrongly out at an important moment for him. He stuck his thumb up and walked back to the baseline, applauding demonstratively. It was striking that prior to this incident, Arnaldi also doubted the decision. To the loud applause of the audience, he sided with Lehecka in the conflict with the referee and gave the (important) point to the Czech. Very sporty from Arnaldi, who apparently wants to win, but only with honestly earned points. And he scored enough well-earned points, because despite the ‘giving away’ point, he also won the third set (6-4) and is now in the semi-finals. There he meets the unseeded Australian Alexei Popyrin who knocked out Dino Prizmic, the hope of Croatia. This took quite a bit of effort, because he not only played against Prizmic, but, understandably, also against the audience that was fully behind ‘their’ player. The victory was therefore narrow (7-6 (2) and 7-5.
After the elimination of number one seeded Lehecka, the second seeded player also seemed unable to reach the semi-finals. The Spaniard Jaume Munar left no doubts about his ambitions and even led 5-0 in the first set. Sonego seemed overwhelmed by the Spanish violence, but just managed to prevent an infamous 6-0. That won game gave Sonego some confidence again and he used the first set to get back into his game. In the end he had to give it up to the Spaniard 6-3, but after that the Spanish ambitions melted like snow in the sun. Sonego defeated Munar decisively (6-1 and 6-2) and is now in the semi-finals.
There awaits him none other than Wawrinka, who also had a difficult start to his match against another Spaniard, Roberto Carballes Baena, placed fourth in Umag. Wawrinka immediately delivered his service, but, unlike Sonego, already put things in order in the first set. The Spaniard seemed to want to wear down the 38-year-old Swiss with many combinations left and right in the corners of the court. Sometimes that worked, but not enough to win the game. Wawrinka is very popular with the public in Umag and unfortunately for the Spaniard, the vast majority of them sided with the Swiss. It resulted in a rebreak and another break so that the first set went to Wawrinka 6-4. In the second set, Wawrinka broke the Spaniard with a 6-5 lead, hitting himself into the semifinals. He then thanked the audience extensively for their support and made quite a show of it by handing out the free tickets for the Davis Cup matches in Split (September 12-17). This was done via caught tennis balls that he hit into the audience, but not after he had first extensively tested which stands produced the most decibels.
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