tennis
Struff fights his way into the second round of Monte Carlo
Weak start, happy ending: Davis Cup player Jan-Lennard Struff struggled to overcome the opening hurdle at the Masters 1000 tournament in Monte Carlo on sand.
After clearly losing the first set, Struff was already 2:5 behind in the second round, but fought his way into the tiebreak, which he ultimately won. In the third set the German was clearly the better player.
“It was a brutally difficult match,” said Struff afterwards on Sky. In the first two sets he “wasn’t so mentally positive,” said the 26th in the world rankings: “Then I fought my way in with a push from outside and managed to increase the quality of the game.”
Later in the afternoon, Dominik Koepfer from Furtwangen will play against the Dutchman Tallon Griekspoor for a place in the second round of the clay court tournament, which offers prize money of almost six million euros. The fifth-seeded Olympic champion Alexander Zverev (Hamburg) will only compete in the second round on Tuesday after a bye at the start.