ATP Barcelona: Struff beats Tsitsipas - Nadal is waiting
Jan-Lennard Struff could not have celebrated his 29th birthday better: thanks to a surprising success over Stefanos Tsitsipas, the German moved into the quarter-finals of the ATP 500 tournament in Barcelona. In this, the German meets Rafael Nadal, second in the world rankings.
by Nikolaus Fink
last edit:
Apr 25, 2019, 09:00 pm
Struff had reached the Barcelona round of 16 after two sets of two sets via Hugo Dellien and David Goffin. There was an extremely unpleasant task waiting for Stefanos Tsitsipas, who had five seeded Greeks. The world ranking night defeated Roger Federer this year at the Australian Open and was in the final in the Catalan capital last year.
However, Struff was not disturbed by these impressive facts and broke his 20-year-old opponent to 3: 2. After the German had awarded three set balls at the score of 5: 3, he brought the first round in his next service game after defense of two break balls into dry cloths.
Struff is not deterred by setbacks
In the second section, Struff missed a 0:30 at 3: 3. This should take revenge immediately: Tsitsipas took the world ranking 51. in the next game, the serve and pocketed the set win a little later with their own service.
The 29-year-old, however, was not disturbed by this and quickly took the 3: 0 lead in the third set. This lead was immediately lost after a re-break from Tsitsipas to 2: 3, but Struff made another break to 4: 2. The German was able to convert this lead into a 6: 4, 3: 6 and 6: 2 success after a little less than two hours of play.
In the quarterfinals (third match after 12:30 CET) the Warsteiner with Rafael Nadal is probably the biggest conceivable challenge for ashes. The Spaniard defeated his countryman David Ferrer in two sets in the round of 16 and said goodbye to the 37-year-old from Barcelona . Before the end of his career, Ferrer will only start at the ATP Masters 1000 tournament in Madrid.