ATP Estoril: Marin Cilic beats Carlos Alcaraz, Alexander Bublik donates, Kei Nishikori withdraws
Marin Cilic had one of his best wins of the current calendar year against Carlos Alcaraz in the first round of the ATP 250 tournament in Estoril. The same applies to Pedro Martinez , who clearly defeated the listlessly playing Alexander Bublik. Meanwhile, Kei Nishikori canceled his start at the clay court event due to injury.
by Nikolaus Fink
last edit: Apr 27, 2021, 09:54 pm
Marin Cilic hasn't had much to laugh about this season so far, but on Tuesday the US Open Champion of 2014 had reason to be happy: The Croatian defeated the only 17-year-old Carlos Alcaraz 6: 3, 1: 6 and 6: 4 and thus celebrated only the sixth success in 2021.
His Spanish compatriot Pedro Martinez fared better than Alcaraz, beating fifth-placed Alexander Bublik 6: 3 and 6: 0. In the second set in particular, however, the Kazakh showed an extremely unmotivated performance and made it not really difficult for his opponent to win the game.
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Martinez will now face Cameron Norrie, who took local hero Joao Sousa out of the tournament in two sets. In any case, there were mostly favorites wins in Estoril on Tuesday: Albert Ramos-Vinolas (vs. Fernando Verdasco), Richard Gasquet (vs. Juan Ignacio Londero), Marco Cecchinato (vs. Lloyd Harris) and Corentin Moutet (vs. Marcos Giron) sat down in their games all through. In addition, Pierre-Hugues Herbert beat his compatriot Gilles Simon 7: 5 and 6: 3.
Meanwhile, the tournament organizers of the clay court event had to accept a bitter cancellation: Kei Nishikori will not serve in Portugal due to an abductor injury. "I am very disappointed. I came here early, had two great days of training, but I replaced myself and injured my right abductor. I will not be ready to play in 48 hours," said the Japanese.
Here the single tableau in Estoril