Croatian tennis players will surely not be complaining about the results of the draw. As one of four top seeds, Borna Coric will be free at the start of the tournament, and he will be playing against the winner of a match between Corentin Moutet and an as-of-yet unknown qualifier in the eighth-finals. Viktor Galovic and Nino Serdarusic, who were invited to play in the main tournament, will be playing in the first round against players who will be coming from the qualification round, which means they won't learn the names of their opponents until Monday.
The first seed, Italian Fabio Fognini, will have bye at the start of the tournament, but his first opponent will be a fellow Italian: either Thomas Fabbiano or Stefano Travaglia. Marco Cecchinato, last year's champion, has been placed as the fifth seed for this year; he will be playing the first round against Slovenian Aljaz Bedene, which could also be a great match.
The main draw will start on Monday, and eight matches of the first round of qualifications will be played on Sunday. The only Croatian player in action will be promising junior Admir Kalender, who was received the wild card; he will be playing against Hungarian Attila Balazs.
Another familiar name will be playing in the qualifications – Spaniard Tommy Robredo, for whom Umag 2013 was the last of his twelve ATP singles titles. He is currently 168th on the singles rankings, which means his current ranking was not sufficient to allow him to enter the main tournament directly. He will begin his qualifications with a match against Miljan Brkic from Serbia.
Great matches right from the first round
The draw for this year's Croatia Open brought luck to some, but not so much to others; there will be world-class matches right from the first round of the tournament that will bring together opponents with big ambitions. One of these, in the third quarter of the draw, is sure to be a battle between last year's semi-finalist Robin Haase from the Netherlands and Andrey Rublev from Russia, the 2017 tournament champion. The winner of this match will go on to the eighth-finals to play the fourth seed, Dusan Lajovic from Serbia.