A tough day for the Italians. At the start of the day there were still five in the tournament, in the evening only the two Lorenzos were left. Musetti had to recover from the shock when he quickly fell 0-3 behind qualifier Marco Trungelliti in his first match, but recovered and did what was expected of him: win. Musetti, seeded second, had a bye in the first round. Trungelliti had already won three games in a row and was in a winning mood. It may seem like a warm-up for big names to start against a qualifier, but practice shows that they often have a hard time against them. This also turned out to be the case for Musetti at the start of the match. But he straightened the score to 3-3 and Trungelliti made more mistakes and succumbed to the pressure of Musetti’s better play, who won 6-4, 6-3. Lorenzo Sonego also secured a place in the quarter-finals with a victory over the Frenchman Alexandre Müller, who earlier sent the Italian Matteo Arnaldi home. Sonego had to fight in the first set (7-5), but won the second with a convincing score of 6-1. The Argentinian Francisco Cerundolo, seeded fourth, also had a bye in the first round and had to play against the Croatian Matej Dodig. He fought bravely, but Cerundolo was really a size too big for the Croat (4-6, 3-6).

Dusan Lajovic and Flavio Cobolli were evenly matched in the first set and a tiebreak had to decide. That was won by Lajovic 7-5, who then advanced in the second set. Much to the frustration of Cobolli, who smashed his racket and went completely crazy when the referee decided that a ball from Lajovic had indeed hit the line and was therefore not out, as Cobolli saw it. Lajovic seemed to win the second set easily at 5-2. Cobolli threw his wristband into the crowd and refused to take his seat during the change over. He seemed completely mentally disconnected. However, he continued to play and to the surprise of the crowd and probably himself, he won the next games. His frustration delivered sledgehammer strokes that Dusan, perhaps also a bit disturbed by the Italian’s fuss, could not process properly. I was unable to heard what exactly was shouted from the audience, but Cobolli complained about it to the referee. The referee showed understanding and asked security to call the screamer to order and apparently remove him if necessary. Dusan seemed taken aback by it. All in all it resulted in a 5-5 score, but at that score Dusan broke Flavio so he could serve for the match. But there was the rebreak and then another tie-break. It again went to Lajocvic, now with 7-3, but it still became a narrow escape for the Serbian.

Fabio Fognini could not continue his good performance from the day before. He was blown away by the Lucky Loser Chun-Hsin Tseng from Taiwan: 6-0, 6-1. Luciano Darderi also found his Waterloo in this second round. He fell against the Czech power of Jacob Mensik, who surprisingly won 6-4, 6-3. Meanwhile, Dutch success can also be reported from Umag. Sander Arends reached the semi-finals in doubles with his partner Denys Molchanov from the Ukraine.

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