Luck had not smiled on Jaume Munar last Monday in the draw for the individual draws in Indian Wells. He got a local player, the Californian Alex Michelsen, a rising tennis player who is only 19 years old and already number 80 in the world. The Mallorcan gave in this Wednesday against a big rival (1.93) and a good hitter, who played very motivated to win 6-2 and 6-3 in 94 minutes.
Munar only had two break chances in the entire match against a fairly confident server, who is the youngest American winner of a Masters 1,000 match since Taylor Fritz and Frances Tiafoe in Miami 2017. He had never competed directly in a tournament draw of this category and it debuted in a big way.
The Spaniard, 26 years old and 76th, could not repeat the success he obtained in 2022 by reaching the third round at the BNP Paribas Open, with victories against Shang and Carreño, and this time he went home in a cold debut. Michelsen will face his compatriot Tommy Paul on Saturday.
The same fate as Munar befell another Spaniard, Bernabé Zapata, who despite taking the lead against the Italian Fabio Fognini ended up losing 4-6, 6-2 and 6-3 after two hours and eight minutes of play.
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With this defeat, Zapata extends his bad streak of results in 2024 (balance of 1-8 after his setback today, not counting previous rounds that have caused him to leave the Top-100 in the ranking) and has gone 9 games without winning on hard courts in a final draw of a tournament since his last two victories on this surface date back to September of last year in the first round of the US Open against the American Ethan Quinn and in the Davis Cup group stage against the South Korean Seongchan Hong.
For its part, the match that the Spanish Roberto Carballés was supposed to play against the Italian Flavio Cobolli was postponed to this Friday due to the rain, which altered part of the match schedule for this Thursday.
2024-03-08 01:27:16
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