Carlos Alcaraz, world number one, qualified with difficulty for the second round of the ATP 500 tournament in Basel on Monday evening against Briton Jack Draper 3-6, 6-2, 7-5.
The young Spaniard, 19, had not won a match on the circuit since his victory in the final of the US Open in September.
For his recovery tournament, at the beginning of the month in Astana, Kazakhstan, he was beaten as soon as he entered the running by the Belgian David Goffin.
On Monday night, against the 45th player in the world, Alcaraz got off to a bad start, conceding his service game twice in the first set, first when the two players were tied at 1-1 and then serving to stay in the set. as Draper led 5-3.
But the young boss of world tennis, more enterprising than his opponent (38 winning strokes and 39 going to the net but 34 unforced errors over the whole match against 27 winning strokes and 12 unforced errors for Draper), did not procrastinate for long. , breaking away 4-0 in the second set to quickly come back up to his opponent.
In the deciding set, Alcaraz thought they had done the hard part by taking Draper's serve in game five to then pull away 4-2, but the Briton pulled back two games later.
Exploiting in particular two unforced errors from his opponent in the eleventh game, Alcaraz broke again to break away 6-5 and serve for the match.
Draper got two break points again, saved two match points.
On the 3rd, he ended up giving in after 2 hours 17 minutes of combat.
In the next round, Alcaraz will face for a place in the quarter-finals the winner of the match between Frenchman Adrian Mannarino (42nd) and Dutchman Botic van de Zandschulp (35th).
./hpa/agt