D'Agostino surprises everyone
The Sparkasse Challenger Val Gardena Südtirol started on Sunday with the first round of the qualifiers not without surprises. The most unexpected victory of the day came courtesy of Luca Giacomini, who eliminated Hady Habib, the Lebanese world number 350 and the number two qualifier. Giacomini won 7:5, 6:3 and will try to get into the draw on Monday by taking on Japan's Ryuki Matsuda. At South Tyrol's most important tennis tournament (36,000 euro prize money, 50 ATP points for the winner) two local players were also in the field, thanks to a wild card: Patric Prinoth from Val Gardena and Pietro Fellin.
Both have already lost, but did not demerit. Prinoth was defeated by Dutchman Ryan Nijboer (world number 491) with a score of 6:4, 6:2 fighting for 77 minutes. Prinoth nullified the first seven break points before relinquishing his service in the tenth game of the first set. The 4:2 break in the second decided the match in favour of the favourite. "I think I can be satisfied with my performance today," said the Gardena native after the match. "In some moments I played well, in others less." Fellin also lost to a player who is almost a thousand places ahead of him in the ATP ranking. Israeli Daniel Cukierman (ATP 363) won 6:4. 7:6 (3), but the 22-year-old, who is studying in the USA, had his chances by playing evenly throughout the match. In the end, breaks in the eighth game of the first set and the tiebreak of the second set were decisive. In the second set, Fellin cancelled Cukierman's 5:2 ball, fought his way back to 6:6 before bowing out after a good fight in 103 minutes. Instead, the surprise winner was Stefano D'Agostino, 19 years old from Arco, in the draw thanks to a wildcard from the Federation. He won in a comeback 4:6, 6:4, 7:6 (1) against Alec Deckers (487 ATP) of the Netherlands, achieving his most prestigious victory. Tomorrow he will face Nijboer for a place in the draw.
The outstanding name in the qualifiers is Lukas Klein, the Slovakian who twelve months ago reached the final in Ortisei only beaten by Croatian Borna Gojo. Klein, world number 178 and number 1 in the qualifiers, won his first match against Italian Federico Arnaboldi 6:1, 4:6, 6:3. If Klein wants to enter the main draw, he will also have to eliminate the other Italian Andrea Picchione at 10am on Monday.
The first three main draw matches will also take place on Monday. With Belgium's Gauthier Onclin (number 2), Estonia's Mark Lajal (number 5) and Italy's Francesco Maestrelli (number 4), three seeds are already in action. Lajal reached the round of 16 last week at the ATP 250 in Antwerp and will rise to 229th in the world rankings on Monday. Lajal will face Poland's Kacper Zuk in the opener. Maestrelli will face Swiss Antoine Bellier.
