ATP Masters Rome: Stefanos Tsitsipas fends off 2 match points against Dimitrov and advances
Stefanos Tsitsipas (ATP No. 5) had to pull out all the stops in his opening match against Grigor Dimitrov - although everything looked like a sovereign victory. In the end it was 6: 3, 5: 7 and 7: 6 (4) for the French Open finalist from 2021 in a great game between two gifted technicians.
by Florian Goosmann
last edit: May 11, 2022, 05:36 pm
The Greek had already led 6:3 and 5:3, but Dimitrov showed great fighting spirit: He won four games in a row and only lost two points to equalize the set.
In the decisive set he turned an early 0:40 and had a match point himself at 5:4. But Tsitsipas bravely parried off the second serve with a serve-and-volley. With the second match point at 6: 5, Tsitsipas had to use the second service again, but scored with a sovereign forehand. In the tie-break, Tsitsipas quickly pulled away 5-0, but Dimirov didn't give up again and made it 4-5. But then Tsitsipas played the game to the end.
"It was an incredible fight, I'm just happy to have done it," said Tsitsipas afterwards. "Grigor played so well."
Tsitsipas was proud to have come back after the course of the game (high lead, match points against him). "I have to process all this now." Nevertheless, he has to work on his slump in the second round, here he acted too defensively.
Tsitsipas meets Karen Khachanov in the round of 16, who won 6: 4, 2: 6, 6: 1 against Pablo Carreno Busta.
At noon, Alexander Zverev and Rafael Nadal had already won their opening games.
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