FILE PHOTO: Tennis – Australian Open – Fourth Round – Melbourne Park, Melbourne, Australia – January 27, 2020 France’s Gael Monfils in action during his match against Austria’s Dominic Thiem REUTERS/Issei Kato
February 7, 2020
Top-seeded Gael Monfils survived a tough three-set match against fellow Frenchman Adrian Mannarino on Thursday to reach the quarterfinals of the Open Sud de France in Montpellier.
In a match that lasted exactly two hours, Monfils emerged with a 4-6, 6-1, 6-4 decision. In the decisive third set, Mannarino broke serve to grab a 2-0 lead, but Monfils recorded breaks on Mannarino’s next two service games to take control.
Second-seeded David Goffin of Belgium saved five set points in a second-set tiebreaker before emerging with a 6-3, 7-6 (9) win over Kazakhstan’s Alexander Bublik. Goffin took advantage of poor serving by Bublik, who hit 12 double faults and just six aces. Goffin had two aces and no double faults.
Other second-round winners were seventh-seeded Filip Krajinovic of Serbia, Slovakia’s Norbert Gombos, plus France’s Pierre-Hugues Herbert and Richard Gasquet.
Tata Open Maharashtra
Italian qualifier Roberto Marcora upset top-seeded Frenchman Benoit Paire 6-4, 6-4 to make the quarterfinals at Pune, India.
Marcora, a 30-year-old ranked 174th in the world, had played in the main draw of an ATP Tour event only once in his career before this week. He qualified for the 2017 tournament in Geneva, Switzerland, and lost in the first round to Kazakhstan’s Mikhail Kukushkin.
Marcora had advanced past Czech qualifier Lukas Rosol in the first round at Pune.
Also moving on to the quarterfinals with second-round wins were fourth-seeded Soonwoo Kwon of South Korea, sixth-seeded James Duckworth of Australia and eighth-seeded Egor Gerasimov of Belarus.
Cordoba Open
Fifth-seeded Albert Ramos-Vinolas won an all-Spanish second-round match in Cordoba, Argentina, topping Pablo Andujar 6-3, 6-7 (4), 6-4.
Andujar faced a whopping 21 break points and managed to save 13 of them. Ramos-Vinolas saved five of the 10 break points he faced.
Also qualifying for the quarterfinals were top-seeded Diego Schwartzman of Argentina, fourth-seeded Laslo Djere of Serbia and eighth-seeded Juan Ignacio Londero of Argentina.
–Field Level Media
