Tennis

Top seed Holger Rune rallies in Basel

October 25, 2023 12:25 pm

[Source: Reuters]

No. 1 seed Holger Rune of Denmark bounced back from a rough first set to beat Serbia’s Miomir Kecmanovic 1-6, 7-5, 6-3 in first-round action at the Swiss Indoors Basel.

Rune overcame four double faults and 15 unforced errors by winning 30 of his 43 first-service points (69.8 percent).

No. 4 seed Hubert Hurkacz of Poland beat Serbia’s Dusan Lajovic 7-6 (2), 6-3, while fifth seed Alex de Minaur of Australia beat Diego Schwartzman of Argentina 6-4, 6-4.

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No. 7 Nicolas Jarry of Chile overcame Frenchman Adrian Mannarino 7-6 (6), 6-7 (2), 6-4 in three hours and 14 minutes. Tallon Griekspoor of the Netherlands, Russian Alexander Shevchenko and Swiss wild card Dominic Stricker also won their matches.

Erste Bank Open

No. 4 seed Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece beat home-country favorite Dominic Thiem 7-6 (5), 6-4 in the first round in Vienna, Austria.

Tsitsipas fired 10 aces and saved all three break points he faced. He had to rally from a 4-2 deficit in the first-set tiebreaker by winning five of the final six points.

No. 3 seed Andrey Rublev of Russia defeated Australia’s Alexei Popyrin 7-6 (5), 6-4, and American sixth seed Tommy Paul took care of Frenchman Alexandre Muller 6-3, 6-1.

No. 7 seed Frances Tiafoe of the U.S. was trailing 1-4 in the first set when opponent Daniel Evans of Great Britain had to retire. Other winners included Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria, Czech qualifier Tomas Machac and Italian lucky loser Lorenzo Sonego.