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Estoril ATP: Schwartzman still does not raise his head but Báez and Cachín won

2023-04-03T23:43:00.094Z


The new number one from Argentina beat the Moldovan Albot and will face the Cordovan who beat the Taiwanese Hsin Tseng. Peque fell with the Italian Cecchinato 96 in the world.


Sebastián Báez

debuted his status as number one in Argentine tennis with a hard-fought celebration in his debut at the

ATP 250 in Estoril

, one of the events that opened the European brick dust tour on Monday, which will end at Roland Garros.

In an almost perfect day for the albiceleste rackets -two wins and one loss-, the man from Buenos Aires, 32nd in the world and champion of the last edition, won 7-5, 7-6 (7-3) against the Moldovan

Radu Albot

, 106th in the ranking, and reached the round of 16.

Pedro Cachín

, 67th, also advanced to the second round, beating Taiwanese

Chun Hsin Tseng

6-4, 6-4 , 145th.

Meanwhile,

Diego Schwartzman

, 36th, lost 6-3 and 7-6 (10-8) with the Italian

Marco Cecchinato

, 96th, and extended his weak moment.

Báez, 22, found himself with many complications to take the first step towards defending his title, not only because of the good game that his rival played, but also because of some discomfort he suffered in his left leg.

Likewise, he knew how to carry out a difficult match, in which he served with the score 2-5 against in the second set and ended up closing in two hours and 13 minutes.

"The first game back on the slow pitches is always tough," Sebas said.

"Albot was close. I know him, he is an experienced player... To take the win I had to be strong in the difficult moments, because there is pressure for me as the defending champion, of course."


The man born in San Martín, who comes from losing in the second round in Miami, became the best ranked Argentine on Monday, climbing to 32nd place in the ranking and surpassing Francisco

Cerúndolo

.

The porteño fell to 33rd after saying goodbye in the quarterfinals in the Florida tournament and not being able to match his performance last year (the semis).

Báez was crowned just over twelve months ago in Estoril by beating the American

Frances Tiafoe

in the final , to add his first trophy in the most important circuit of men's tennis.

At the beginning of February, in

Córdoba

, she got the second by winning the decisive duel against

Federico Coria

.

The next opponent of the Buenos Aires player, fifth seeded, will be

Cachín

.

The 27-year-old from Cordoba passed the first round of the Portuguese tournament with much more comfort, with a solid victory against Tseng, in a match that lasted one hour and 36 minutes.

The native of Bell Ville -who in his time at the US cement Masters 1000 celebrated his first victory in that category (in

Indian Wells

)- played a challenger on brick dust last week in Girona (lost in the quarterfinals), for which he which came with some filming on this surface.

It will be the first duel between Báez and Cachín.

The winner could meet in the quarterfinals with the Norwegian

Casper Ruud

, top seed, who will first have to face a duel against the Italian

Giulio Zeppieri

or the Portuguese

Joao Sousa

.

New setback for Schwartzman

The bad news of the day was the fall of

Diego Schwartzman

, which extended a worrying losing streak.

El

Peque

, seeded seventh, lost in two sets with Cecchinato and added a new defeat, the fifth in 2023 on clay, a surface on which he used to feel very comfortable -in 2020, he beat Rafael Nadal in Rome and was a semifinalist at

Roland Garros

- but in which he still failed to win this season.

The Italian took possession of the first set without much effort, after 37 minutes.

But the porteño raised the level in the second and, with a lot of grit, gave his rival a fight.

He was broken down twice (1-2 and 5-6), but broke back twice and came close to forcing the third set.

It is that he got to 5-2 in the tie-break of the second, but the European was stronger at the end of the tiebreaker and ended up celebrating.

Schwartzman accumulates only three victories this season (in

Australia

,

Indian Wells

and

Miami

) and nine falls.

He hasn't won two matches in a row since

last year's

US Open .

And on clay, his last celebration was almost nine months ago, in July, in

Bastad

, where he defeated Elias Ymer in his debut and later fell to Pedro Carreño Busta.

Likewise,

Peque

does not give up and continues looking for a way to turn around his bad moment and rediscover his best tennis, the one that led him to occupy the eighth step of the ranking in 2020. Will he be able to take advantage of this tour of slow courts to recover the good feelings?

look also

ATP Ranking: Djokovic regains number 1 without playing and Báez commands among Argentine tennis players

Daniil Medvedev continues his streak: he beat Jannik Sinner solidly and celebrated at the Masters 1000 in Miami

Source: clarin

All news articles on 2023-04-03

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