The top of the draw, as announced, is reserved for the world’s eighth ranked player, Russian Andrey Rublev, who will be spared at the start of the tournament, just like the remaining three top-seeded players. He might face Luka Mikrut in the second round, if the 20-year-old Croatian player defeats the Argentinian Camilo Ugo Carabelli. Matej Dodig, the 18-year-old who also received an invitation to the tournament, starts against a player who came through the qualifiers, while Mili Poljičak faces Italy’s Lorenzo Sonego in the first round.
The second seed is Italy’s Lorenzo Musettu, the third is Denmark’s Holger Rune, and the fourth is the Argentinian Francisco Cerundolo. Title defender Alexei Popyrin (Australia) is not one of the top seeded players, and neither are two of the past winners of this tournament, Fabio Fognini (Italy) and Dušan Lajović (Serbia).
The main tournament starts on Sunday, 21 July, while the qualifiers are scheduled for the day before, Saturday. Two Croatian players will try to qualify this way, the finalists of the Road to Umag tournament, which wrapped on Thursday. They are invitation holders Deni Žmak and Matija Pecotić. They need to pass two qualifier rounds in order to place in the main tournament: On Saturday, Pecotić faces the Argentinian Marco Trungelliti (5 p.m.) and Žmak plays against the Taiwanese Chun-Hsin Tseng (the second match after 5 p.m.).
