By Chris Oddo | Wednesday February 20, 2019
Top-seeded Stefanos Tsitsipas broke open a tight first set and ran away with his second-round match with Poland’s Hubert Hurkacz on Wednesday in Marseille, cruising to a decisive 6-4 6-2 triumph and booking a spot in the quarter-finals at the Open 13 Provence.
Impressively, the World No.12 dropped just nine points on serve and broke serve three times on five opportunities to clinch his victory over the 22-year-old Pole in just under an hour.
The Greek was a steady presence at the net during the affair and although the World No.78 managed to stay on serve through the first eight games of the match he was broken while serving at 4-5 in the opening set.
Hurkacz stayed level through two games in the second set but ended up dropping the final four games and 16 of the final 18 points as Tsitsipas ramped up the pressure in every aspect of his bristling game. It was a decisive performance from the Greek, who struck the ball with authority, moved gracefull and read the game of Hurkacz to perfection.
It was Tsitsipas’ first win in three appearances at Marseille and he’ll face either Sergiy Stakhovsky or Gregoire Barrere in the quarter-finals.
Barrere stopped Jiri Vesely 7-6(3) 6-3 on Wednesday.
Shapovalov Knocked Out at First Hurdle
Denis Shapovalov fell at the first hurdle to veteran Mikhail Kukushkin, 6-4 7-6(4) despite cracking 18 aces. The Canadian couldn’t solve the Kazakh’s serve and failed to convert either of his two break point opportunities in the contest. Then he dropped a second-set tiebreaker and fell to 7-5 on the season.
Kukushkin broke for 4-3 in the opening set and held in his final two service games to close it out.
Shapovalov fell behind by 4-0 in the second-set breaker and couldn't find his way back. The Canadian saved a pair of match points to close to 6-4, but Kukushkin closed affairs with an ace to reach his first quarter-final of 2019.
“At the end I believe I was just a little more lucky in the tiebreak,” said Kukushkin after the match.
In other action on Wednesday French wild card Ugo Humbert took out Ernests Gulbis 6-3 7-6(3), while Matthias Bachinger defeated Steve Darcis 4-6 6-3 6-4.