For the second time now, Robin Haase has managed to turn around a match in Umag in his favor, defeating yet another qualifier. In the first round, he struggled against Rogerio Dutra Silva, and in the second, Martin Kližan forced him to once again spend two hours on the court.
In fact, after breaking Haase’s serve in the fifth game of the second set, the Slovakian was quite close to winning the match, thus extending his winning streak in Umag to four matches, seeing as he had already won two qualifying matches; however, the experienced Haase had different plans and went from being down 2:4 in the second set to winning seven games in a row. He thus won the second set and was up 3:0 in the deciding, third set, which was enough for him to bring everything to completion, with a 3:6, 6:4, 6:3 win. So much so that in the last three games of the third set, Kližan took just one point on the Dutchman’s serve…
Several hours later, Haase learned that his quarterfinal opponent would be Andrey Rublev, who survived a turbulent match against the young Felix Auger-Aliassime. Their three-setter was an excellently played battle between the two stars of tomorrow. The Canadian was one break up in the deciding set (3:1) but then failed to win a single game until the end of the match.
Consequently, the title defender is still in the tournament. He was very happy with the job well done.
- This is my first match after three months and a back injury, and it was unbelievable. I am really tired, as if I played five sets and not three - said the 20-year-old Russian.
When Auger-Aliassime won the tiebreak to even the score, he gained in confidence and that took him all the way to what seemed to be the key lead at the start of the third set. He played better, his serve was more confident, and Rublev looked like he could no longer keep up with that rhythm. However, the Russian then managed to overcome his nervousness and summon up the strength to make a complete turnaround.
- I enjoyed the atmosphere, there were a lot of fans out there supporting us. Will I defend the title? I don’t know. This is just the first match, and it was really hard.
In the 28 years since the launch of the tournament in Umag, only two qualifiers have won it (Poliakov in 1991 and Cuevas in 2014), while Rublev claimed last year’s title as the lucky loser. Marco Trungelliti still has the chance to win it this year. The Argentinian beat Hungary’s Marton Fucsovics, achieving his biggest success so far – this is his career-first ATP quarterfinal. His next opponent is Evgeny Donskoy. The Russian beat the favored Damir Džumhur, ending the match an hour and ten minutes after midnight.
