Italy’s Matteo Berrettini superior to the second spherical of the Rolex Shanghai Masters on Thursday with a hard-fought 7-6 (9), 7-6 (6) victory over Australia’s Christopher O’Connell in China.
Exhibiting no unwell results after final week’s second-round withdrawal in Tokyo resulting from an stomach difficulty, Berrettini struck 11 aces amongst his 33 winners to win in 2 hours and 13 minutes.
Berrettini fought off two set factors within the first-set tie-break and trailed 5-4 within the second-set tie-break, organising a conflict with Twelfth-seeded Holger Rune of Denmark.
“I am comfortable to be again right here and wholesome. I’ve by no means performed him so did not know what to anticipate,” Berrettini mentioned.
“Mentally it has been robust,” he continued. “… Too typically I’ve been serious about the way to be wholesome and it is one thing I’ve grown a bit uninterested in. I have been working onerous to have the ability to assume as much less as doable about this. It was one of many objectives of the match. Not to consider my situation, simply to benefit from the match, benefit from the environment, which I did.”
Serbia’s Miomir Kecmanovic achieved a profession milestone along with his 6-2, 6-2 first-round win in opposition to Rinky Hijikata of Australia. That gave him a minimum of one match victory in all 9 ATP Masters 1000 occasions. It was Kecmanovic’s first hard-court win since Toronto in August 2023.
Chinese language wild card Yi Zhou, 19, superior when Japan’s Yoshihito Nishioka retired with a again harm after constructing a 4-2 lead within the first set. The house favourite will tackle No. 13 seed Frances Tiafoe within the second spherical.
Japan’s Yosuke Watanuki, Jakub Mensik of the Czech Republic and Tallon Griekspoor of the Netherlands every held on for three-set victories. Watanuki overcame Russia’s Pavel Kotov 7-6 (6), 6-4, 7-5, Mensik outlasted Spain’s Pedro Martinez 6-1, 5-7, 6-4 and Griekspoor eradicated Argentina’s Facundo Diaz Acosta 6-4, 6-7 (6), 6-3.
Straight-sets winners included Belgium’s David Goffin and Zizou Bergs, Switzerland’s Stan Wawrinka, Spain’s Jaume Munar, Russia’s Roman Safiullin, Kazakhstan’s Alexander Shevchenko, Italy’s Mattia Bellucci, France’s Terence Atmane and American Marcos Giron.
Defending champion Hubert Hurkacz of Poland shouldn’t be competing resulting from a knee harm.
–Discipline Stage Media
