Jannik Sinner struggles again but goes to semifinals in Halle

Jannik Sinner struggles again but goes to semifinals in Halle

In the quarterfinals of the’ATP 250 on the German grass in Halle Jannik Sinner beat home favorite Jan-Lennard Struff, world number 41, with a score of 6-2 6-7 7-6.

No break point until 3-2 for Sinner in the first set, which was closed by the world number 1 winning four consecutive games, which with the first of the second set makes five.

There were two breaks for the South Tyrolean: in the sixth game he went 0-40 on Struff’s serve, made a comeback but at the fourth opportunity broke him. Almost identical sequence in the’eighth game: 15-40, two set points canceled but the third è the good one.

In the second set Sinner does not concede a single break point but fails to exploit four, one on 2-1 and three consecutive on 3-2. It goes to the tie-break which is dominated by Struff, the German goes to 4-0 and then wins 7-1.

Once again Jannik goes 0-40 on his opponent’s serve in the first game of the third set but once again he gets a comeback, then fails to take advantage of two more break points. The first and only break point he concedes è on 2-3 in the third set but he cancels it, he has two more consecutive ones on 4-4 but does not convert them.

It goes to tie-breaks and finally Sinner, who had lost them all in this tournament, wins one, the most important one, going 3-0 and then 6-2 closing on the second match point after more than two and a half hours of play. In the semifinals he will find China’s Zhizhen Zhang, who beat U.S. Christopher Eubanks 6-4 4-6 7-5 by coming back from 2-5 down in the third set.