Medvedev saves set point, claws past Borges in Halle

pa href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/daniil-medvedev/mm58/overview'Daniil Medvedev/a made a successful start to his chase for his first title of the year Monday in Halle./p

pDespite facing a set point at 5-6 in the opening set, the third seed defeated Portugalrsquo;s a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/nuno-borges/bt72/overview'Nuno Borges/a 7-6(4), 6-4 to reach the second round of the a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/tournaments/halle/500/overview'Terra Wortmann Open/a. Medvedev claimed his first grass-court win of 2024 in one hour and 31 minutes.nbsp;/p

p"It was a really tricky match. First match on grass, so the sensations were not there," Medvedev said. "But I tried my best and I felt like in the end of the match we were both playing better and better, so that's a good thing and actually the last game I played on the return was pretty good."/p

pBorges, who was trying to claim the first Top 10 win of his career (now 0-8), had an opening at the end of the first set. The favourite Medvedev hit a double fault well long to give the Portuguese No. 1 a set point. But the 28-year-old then hit a big first serve out wide to escape trouble./p

pAccording to Infosys ATP Stats, the No. 5 player in the PIF ATP Rankings only won five more points than his opponent in the match (74-69), but he saved five of the six break points he faced, which proved critical./p

blockquote class="twitter-tweet"

p lang="en" dir="ltr"Brilliance off strings and frame ????a href="https://twitter.com/ATPHalle?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"@ATPHalle/a | a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/TerraWortmannOpen?src=hashamp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"#TerraWortmannOpen/a | a href="https://twitter.com/DaniilMedwed?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"@DaniilMedwed/a a href="https://t.co/sb9A7QmSn4"pic.twitter.com/sb9A7QmSn4/a/p

mdash; ATP Tour (@atptour) a href="https://twitter.com/atptour/status/1802720090007151074?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"June 17, 2024/a/blockquote

script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"/script

pA finalist this year at the a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/tournaments/australian-open/580/overview'Australian Open/a and a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/tournaments/indian-wells/404/overview'BNP Paribas Open/a, Medvedev is now 22-1 against players outside the Top 20 this season. He will next play Chinese No. 1 a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.atptour.com/en/players/zhizhen-zhang/z371/overview" target="_blank"Zhang Zhizhen/a, who battled past a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/sebastian-ofner/o513/overview'Sebastian Ofner/a 7-6(8), 6-7(3), 6-4./p

pIt will be the first Lexus ATP Head2Head meeting between Medvedev and Zhang (no previous tour-level matches), but they played once eight years ago in Nice ATP 250 qualifying. Medvedev won the match in a final-set tie-break./p

pFifth seed a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/hubert-hurkacz/hb71/overview'Hubert Hurkacz/a closed out the day's action with a 7-5, 7-6(2) win against a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/flavio-cobolli/c0e9/overview'Flavio Cobolli/a./p

pThe Polish star hit 19 aces and won 80 per cent of his first-serve points. He will next take on Australian qualifier a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/james-duckworth/d994/overview'James Duckworth/a or #NextGenATP Brazilian a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/joao-fonseca/f0fv/overview'Joao Fonseca/a./p

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pWild card a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/dominik-koepfer/ke73/overview'Dominik Koepfer/a of Germany led eighth seed a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/felix-auger-aliassime/ag37/overview'Felix Auger-Aliassime/a 6-4, 4-3, when the Canadian retired due to a left hip injury./p

pIn other action, a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/fabian-marozsan/m0ci/overview'Fabian Marozsan/a ousted a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/roman-safiullin/sx50/overview'Roman Safiullin/a 7-5, 4-6, 6-1. He could next play World No. 1 a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/jannik-sinner/s0ag/overview'Jannik Sinner/a should the Italian defeat Dutchman a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/tallon-griekspoor/gj37/overview'Tallon Griekspoor/a./p

pAnother Italian, a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/lorenzo-sonego/su87/overview'Lorenzo Sonego/a, squeaked past Serbian a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/miomir-kecmanovic/ki95/overview'Miomir Kecmanovic/a 7-6(6), 7-6(5) behind a good first-serve performance, winning 85 per cent of those points. Sonego will take on second seed a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/alexander-zverev/z355/overview'Alexander Zverev/a or qualifier a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/oscar-otte/o449/overview'Oscar Otte/a next./p

p[NEWSLETTER FORM]/p