French Open finalist Alexander Zverev is not travelling to Stuttgart as planned. Jan-Lennard Struff is carrying the German tennis hopes at the Weissenhof, as he did last year. The start is a success.
Last year’s finalist Jan-Lennard Struff made a successful start to the grass court season in Stuttgart. The 34-year-old tennis professional from Sauerland beat the Italian outsider Flavio Cobolli 7:6 (9:7), 6:3. The world number 35 thus advanced to the round of 16 as the third German participant after Yannick Hanfmann and Dominik Koepfer.
In an unfortunate scene, Struff accidentally hit a ball girl with his serve during his service game at 5:5. He immediately raised his hand in apology. The girl was temporarily substituted, but returned to the court shortly afterwards.
In the tiebreak, the Sauerlander made two double faults, one of them on set point, but still secured the first set. In the second set, he paved the way for his advancement with his early break to 2-0. The Warsteiner was unstoppable on his own serve. His opponent on Thursday is the Frenchman Arthur Rinderknech.
Koepfer from the Black Forest (against the Italian Lorenzo Musetti) and Hanfmann from Karlsruhe (against the American defending champion Frances Tiafoe) will be fighting for a place in the quarter-finals on Wednesday.
Germany’s best tennis player Alexander Zverev, meanwhile, canceled his start in Stuttgart two days after losing the French Open final, as expected. “I have played a lot of tennis in the last few weeks and reached the final in Paris, where I played five difficult sets. I feel that my body is not ready to go from clay to grass now,” the Hamburg native explained his cancellation in the organizers’ statement.
Source: Stern
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