(Tennis news) The opening matches of the ABN Amro World Tennis Tournament saw seeds and wildcards being knocked out of the event. Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Nikoloz Basilashvili were beaten in their opening matches. Hubert Hurkacz started the season with three victories at the ATP Cup then had a shocker at Australia as he exited in the second round. At Rotterdam, the 24 year old was against wildcard Tsonga who was serving as good as his younger opponent. A counter punch backhand by Hurkacz in the 10th game broke Tsonga’s serve as he lost the set even though lost the final crucial points.
In the second set, the Polish number one continued serving well but Tsonga too did not give away any breaks this time and even had set points in the tie breaker. This time the world number 11 again took the final few points to win the match, he came to the net 21 times and only lost 1 point as Tsonga failed to beat his volleys. Hurkacz defeated Tsonga 6-4, 7-6(9-7).
Cameron Norrie got his first victory in the 5th match of the season as he beat Ugo Humbert to go 1 all in their head to head meetings. Norrie started by winning the first 4 games of the match, Humbert was not able to get the finish he wanted at the net. The Frenchmen could only win one point out of 12 against Norrie’s first serve and lost more than half of his first serves. The world number 13 faced resistance in the second set as he was down 1-4 as Humbert began to finish points from the baseline and increased his second serve speed. The 23 year old had his chances at 4-2 and 4-4 but the Brit upped his defense and took the last five games of the match to advance to the next round. Norrie defeated Humbert 6-2, 6-4.
Alex De Minaur has so far lost two matches this year and both were against top 10 players. The 22 year old picked up his 6th victory of the season by beating David Goffin in which he bageled the Belgian in the opening set. De Minaur did not let Goffin win any of the second serves as the 31 year old lost all of his second serves in the opening set, the Australian won 7 straight games in the match. In the second set, Goffin broke serve to take a 2-1 lead in a marathon game but the lead was short lived as his service got broken the very next game. The world number 34 again broke serve in the 8th game and served out the match in an hour and 13 minutes. De Minaur defeated Goffin 6-0, 6-3.
