Fifth-seeded Jannick Sinner of Italy needed nearly three hours to survive his first-round match at the Open 13 Provence, eventually prevailing 7-6 (3), 6-7 (5), 7-5 over France’s Gregoire Barrere in Marseille, France.
Barrere served for the match at 5-4 in the third set before Sinner won that game and the next two to advance in 2 hours, 52 minutes.
In the day’s other action, French wild-card entrant Hugo Gaston rallied past Austria’s Dennis Novak 3-6, 6-4, 6-1, and Finland’s Emil Ruusuvuori got a win when eighth-seeded Yoshihito Nishioka of Japan retired while trailing 6-2, 4-2.
Chile Dove Men+Care Open
Frances Tiafoe survived a three-tiebreaker marathon, as the fifth-seeded American edged Chilean wild-card entrant Nicolas Jarry 7-6 (7), 6-7 (7), 7-6 (7) in first-round action at Santiago, Chile.
Tiafoe squandered four match points in the second set, then failed to take advantage of two more in the third-set tiebreaker before finally sealing the victory. Jarry finished with a 29-13 edge in aces, and each player had his serve broken just once, both midway through the third set.
Also capturing first-round wins were Spain’s Roberto Carballes Baena, Argentina’s Facundo Bagnis, Colombia’s Daniel Elahi Galan and Portugal’s Pedro Sousa.
Qatar ExxonMobil Open
Fifth-seeded Roberto Bautista Agut of Spain came from behind to beat the United States’ Reilly Opelka 4-6, 6-3, 6-4 in Doha, Qatar.
Each set in the 2-hour, 4-minute match included only one service break. Opelka fired 22 aces to Bautista Agut’s six.
Other opening-round winners were Nikoloz Basilashvili of Georgia, Alexander Bublik of Kazakhstan, Taylor Fritz of the United States, Richard Gasquet of France and wild-card entrant Aslan Karatsev of Russia.
–Field Level Media
