Tennis professional Jan-Lennard Struff has made it into the second round of the ATP Masters in Monte Carlo after a great comeback. The Warsteiner was already behind 1:6, 2:5 against the Argentinian clay court specialist Sebastian Baez before he turned the match in his direction. After 2:25 hours, Struff prevailed 1:6, 7:6 (7:3), 6:2.
“It was a brutally close thing, I’m glad I won it,” said Struff on Sky: “I’m very happy that I was able to turn it around somehow. I didn’t play well in the first two sets. Mentally “I wasn’t positive, but somehow I was able to improve the quality of my game again.”
In the second round, the 33-year-old will face Alexander Bublik (Kazakhstan/No. 16) or Borna Coric (Croatia). Last year, Struff reached the quarter-finals as a qualifier at the first major tournament of the clay court season, later he sensationally even made it to the final in Madrid and has a lot of points to defend in the world rankings this year.
Struff is still fighting for a place at the Olympic Games in Paris, but he must not fall too far behind in the ranking. “The competition is great, it will be a hot race,” he said recently. He wanted to “really accelerate” on sand.
Against Baez, who had already won the tournaments in Rio de Janeiro and Santiago de Chile on the red clay this year, he put his plan into action after the false start.
The entire world’s best is competing in Monte Carlo, Novak Djokovic (Serbia) is back at the start after a break and is in first place ahead of Jannik Sinner (Italy). Both have a bye in the first round, as does Olympic champion Alexander Zverev (Hamburg).
2024-04-07 14:49:00
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