Cristian Garin asserted his hierarchy as seventeenth seed to get rid, in five disputed sets, of the Spanish Bernabé Zapata, who made his debut in the final table at Wimbledon, 6-7 (6), 6-3, 3-6, 6-3 and 6-2, in three hours and ten minutes.
Garín began surprisingly yielding the first set, after a tie break, and despite recovering in the second, he fell again in the third, leaving the Spaniard only one sleeve away from the feat.
At that moment, the Chilean began to show why one is 20 in the ATP ranking and the other number 125, and managed to raise his level of play to prevail in the last two sets with relative solvency.
Zapata ends in this way his debut in the final table at Wimbledon, where he arrived from the previous one, and completes his second passage through a Grand Slam, after Roland Garros was eliminated, also in the first round, by his compatriot Carlos Alcaraz.
It is the only Grand Slam where he had not yet won a match. The last Chilean to win at La Catedral was Nicolás Jarry in 2018 and just before Fernando González for the last time in 2011.
On Garin’s horizon now appears the South African Marc Polmans, 154 of the world and also from the previous one.
In his only precedent between the two at last year’s Roland Garros, the Chilean won in four sets in the second round.
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