ATP Hamburg: Luciano Darderi trips Brandon Nakashima, flop for Alexander Zverev

At the end of a very hard battle that lasted nearly three hours, Luciano Darderi earned a place among the top eight at the Hamburg tournament, an ATP 500 that so many of the players are using as a platform to prepare for Roland Garros. In the quarters the Italian-Argentine will face Andrey Rublev, while Alexander Zverev, who was surprised by Frenchman Alexandre Muller, will not be there.

The match between Darderi and Nakashima does not start in the best way for the Villa Gesell native, who goes down by three games at 5-2. From there, however, a spectacular comeback begins, with five games won in a row leading him to win the first set 7-5. The second fraction, full of breaks and counterbreaks despite its balance, ended in a tie-break, where Nakashima prevailed 9-7 after nullifying three match points, but in the third Darderi took off from 2-2 down, winning four games in a row and clinching the victory. 7-5, 6(7)-7, 6-2 was the final result.

Zverev also gets off to a bad start against Muller, but unlike Darderi he struggles to get back on his feet: the first set ends 6-3 for the Frenchman, Sascha seems to put things back on track in the second fraction winning it 6-4 but in the third and decisive set, decided at the tie-break, Muller is more lucid in the decisive moments and brings home the qualification to the quarterfinals: 6-3, 4-6, 7-6(5) the score that goes into the archives.

Two Italians will therefore be present in the quarterfinals of the Hamburg tournament: Luciano Darderi will meet Andrey Rublev, who executed Justin Engel in the round of 16, while Flavio Cobolli, who defeated Alejandro Davidovich Fokina in his round of 16 match, will face another Spaniard, Roberto Bautista-Agut, who beat Frances Tiafoe. With the latter and Zverev eliminated, it is now Rublev who is the highest seed still in the running, with number 3 on the scoreboard.