In his first round match, the Argentinian Ugo Carabelli won against the Croatian Luka Mikrut. It initially seemed to be an easy victory for the Argentine who was clearly the better player in the first set and won it quite easily and convincingly (6-2). But in the second, Luka changed his mind and that was necessary, because in the first set shallow balls were punished mercilessly by Ugo. Luka now played the balls close to the baseline more often, making it more difficult for Ugo to make the corners. In addition, he brought much more variation to his play, by alternating short and long balls, spreading better and also coming to the net more. Carabelli tried to punish this with passing strokes, but was not very successful, because the majority of those passing strokes flew out. Mikrut’s better play, passionately supported by the home crowd, made the second set a lot more exciting. To the Argentinian’s visible relief, there was no need to play a third set, as he still managed to break the Croatian at the end of the set (7-5).
It was also an exciting match between the Kazakh Alexander Shevchenko and the Hungarian Fabian Marozsan. Marozsan won the first set 6-4, but lost the second 4-6. And Shevchenko wanted to emphasize this even more by calling on the audience, which initially was mainly in favor of the Hungarian, to also cheer for him. The audience then saw a thrilling third set in which none of the players wanted to give up. This inevitably led to a tiebreak that ultimately was won by the Hungarian (10-8).
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