On a grey and wet day in Rome, longer matches featured on the ATP draw.
On a non-typical rainy and cold day in Rome, protagonists of the ATP masters 1000 of the Internazionali BNL d’Italia had to adapt to the conditions and deal with the delays that weather forced on them. With many players going the distance and passing more than 3 hours on court, Andrey Rublev, on the contrary, showed no problems and cruised past his first match.
6th seed Rublev opened the program on campo Pietrangeli where a big crowd gathered under colourful umbrellas to watch him playing against Alex Molcan of Slovakia. Rublev enjoyed the support of a loud public and paid them back with a convincing performance, despite this being his first match in the tournament. The quick 6-3 6-4 allowed him to close his match before the longest shower of the day, which halted all other matches for almost an hour.
POINT. OF. THE. MATCH. ☂️🎪@AndreyRublev97 beats the rain and moves past Molcan 6-3, 6-4 to reach the third round in Rome!@InteBNLdItalia | #IBI23 pic.twitter.com/tkTzQEetl4
— ATP Tour (@atptour) May 13, 2023
Following a day full of upsets yesterday, it looked like Borna Coric might have seen his name added to this list today. The Croatian struggled against Thiago Monteiro, with the Brazilian holding a break advantage in the first set and then managing to grind his way to a match point in the tiebreak of the second set.
The 15th seed cleared the point and forced the match to a decider. Even if he looked more and more in control and he did not face break points there, he failed to convert his chances on return and another tiebreak was to decide the winner of the match. After almost 3.30 hours, Coric could take a sigh of relief and book a slot in the 3rd round with a 6-4 7-6(8) 7-6(5) victory under his belt.
For one seed managing a Houdini escape, another one fell: Daniel Evans battled for almost 4 hours with Roberto Carballes Baena before surrendering 7-6(5) 5-7 6-4.
Share
