The Generali Open in Kitzbuhel kicks off with Igor Sijsling, Karen Khachanov and Mischa Zverev finding convincing wins.
The Austrian tournament, an Atp 250, is played on outdoor red clay. The conditions of play are made pretty quick by the altitude, about 750 metres above sea, so a big serve can be an important factor in every match. The defending champion is German Philipp Kohlschreiber, who has a bye in first round.
The first match of the main draw saw the Dutch Igor Sijsling taking on the Frenchman qualifier Kenny De Schepper. The giant De Schepper (6’8”,203 cm) could not get many free points with his serve, and he was broken four times out of ten service games. Sijsling proved more solid from the baseline, and attacked well when he needed, to seal a 7-5 6-2 win in 1 hour and 12 minutes.
Then,20 year-old Karen Khachanov comfortably defeated the veteran Filippo Volandri, who had gotten through the qualifying. The clay-court specialist Volandri broke his opponent in the second game of each set to lead 2-0 , but Khakhanov managed to come back to win 6-2 6-4. The Russian will face second seeded and former champion Kohlschreiber in the second round.
The closest match of the day was between German Mischa Zverev, brother of Alexander, and Argentinian Facundo Bagnis. Zverev, a 28 year-old, shew a very aggressive game, approaching the net every time he could. With both players serving well, the first set went to a tie-break, where Zverev kept coming in at every opportunity. Bagnis found some brilliant winning returns, but made lots of unforced errors on his serve, so the German took the first set 7-5 in the breaker. In the second set, Zverev always played serve and volley on both first and second serve, but Bagnis returned well and broke him twice, in order to lead 6-5 with serve. But the German did not give up, he came back from 5-6 15-30 and broke the Argentinian back before closing the match out 7-6(5) 7-6(5).
In the other matches, Spaniard Daniel Munoz De La Nava pulled out a great performance to oust German Michael Berrer 6-3 6-3 and win his first singles match on clay since February, while in an all-Spanish battle Daniel Gimeno-Traver eliminated seventh seed Inigo Cervantes 6-4 6-4.
ATP KITZBUHEL, first round results:
D.Gimeno-Traver (Q,ESP) def I.Cervantes [7,ESP] 6-4 6-4
D.Munoz De La Nava (ESP) def M.Berrer (GER) 6-3 6-3
I.Sijsling (NED) def K.De Schepper (Q,FRA) 7-5 6-2
M.Zverev (GER) def F.Bagnis (ARG) 7-6(5) 7-6(5)
K.Khachanov (RUS) def F.Volandri (Q,ITA) 6-2 6-4
