Francisco Cerundolo stopped the impetus of the German teenager Justin Engel at the ATP 250 Almaty Open
The fourth-seeded Francisco Cerundolo (Argentina) stopped the impetus of the German teenager Justin Engel, defeating him by 2-0 (6:4, 7:6) in the second round of the ATP 250 Almaty Open. The Argentinian tennis player needed an hour and a half to knock out his young opponent, who recently achieved his first ATP win.
Francisco Cerundolo started perfectly the match by an early break and took a lead by 2:0 and did not lost his advance by the end of the set and even missed two more breakpoints. At the end he won by 6:4.
The second set started in similar fashion with an early break for the Argentinian player, who again lead by 2:0. None of the opponent reached a breakpoint and Francisco Cerundolo was to serve for the match at 5:4, but Justin Engel succeeded to return the break and equalized the score to 5:5. Thus, without any breakpoints by the end of the set, it went into a tiebreak. Francisco Cerundolo took a lead by 5-0 in the tiebreak by recording three minibreaks and this proved to be enough for him to win the match from his third match point.
In the next round, Francisco Cerundolo will face the winner between Aslan Karatsev (Russia) and Alexander Shevchenko (Kazakhstan).
In the other match from the day, Aleksandar Vukic defeated James Duckworth by 2-0 (6:4, 7:5) in the all-Australian match. In the next round, Vukic will face the 8th-seeded Adrian Mannarino (France), who eliminated Roman Safiullin (Russia) after a comeback by 2-1 (5:7, 7:6, 6:3)
