Luca Giacomini, the fairy tale continues
Luca Giacomini, the fairy tale continues
Luca Giacomini remains the big star of the Sparkasse Challenger Val Gardena Südtirol. From the qualifiers he lands for the first time in his career to the quarters in a challenger beating the Ukrainian Illya Marchenko in a comeback 4:6, 6:2, 7:6 (5) in the longest and most intense match of the tournament so far. 2 hours and 38 minutes of great fight.
Marchenko è arrived in Val Gardena with the final at the Hamburg challenger last week and was the eve favorite. In the first set è a break in the first game was fatal to Giacomini. In the second set the outsider evened the score by breaking serve three times in a row to his opponent, who is 487 places ahead of him in the ATP rankings (212 to 699). Down 2:4 in the third, Giacomini seemed doomed, but he placed the 4:4 break and secured the tiebreak, which he played very well. He goes ahead 5:1 and closes on the third matchpoint.
“Not è the strongest player I have beaten in my career, but this definitely è the most important result, for now”, he told
Giacomini after the’exploit. “È it was a crazy game, I played great so I am happy. The only thing I thought when I was down 2:4 in the third was to fight every point and break him to maybe win the match. I was lucky in some situations, it paid off. Now I play against Gaio or Forti. I didn’t know, I didn’t see the scoreboard. Let’s see how it goes.” The blue derby è scheduled at 6 p.m. as the last match of the day.
Lukas Klein also continues his run in Val Gardena. The finalist of last year’s edition in the opening day won the duel of the qualifiers against Mirza Basic (Bosnia and Herzegovina) winning the two tiebreaks 7:6 (5), 7:6 (3) and setting up his fourth win in five days in Ortisei. Klein è the top-ranked player in the world ranking present in Ortisei, but had to play the qualifiers, because he was not on the entry
list. The Slovak, number 181 this week in the ATP rankings, has won eight of his last nine matches in this tournament.
