PARIS – If Damir Dzumhur had managed to hold serve at 6-5 in the fourth set against Sascha Zverev, the 26-year-old Bosnian would have pulled out the biggest upset of day six at this year’s French Open. Unfortunately, Dzumhur – who was born during the devastating war that affected Sarajevo in the early nineties – didn’t put any first serves in play, lost the game at love and dropped the tie-breaker with the score of 7-2. Despite the disappointment, the Bosnian was able to regroup and held a match-point when leading 5-4 in the fifth, but from that moment on Zverev served particularly well, saved the match-point and ended up closing out the match 7-5 in the fifth set.
The No. 2-seed Zverev is once again showing some frustrating nerves when competing at Grand Slam level. So far in Paris, it took the young German ten sets and seven and a half hours to prevail over routine opponents such as Lajovic and Dzumhur.
In his post-match press conference, Dzumhur – who had been coached by Italy’s Alberto Castellani for a long time – looked certainly sad for not capitalizing on a huge opportunity against Zvever but didn’t seem to complain too much. In his home country, the Bosnian has unquestionably lived through much more difficult moments, which helped him put things into perspective.
“The war destroyed everything. We didn’t have any tennis courts, so I started playing at a school that had a smaller court. I had to work extremely hard and didn’t have access to any facility. I hope to be the living proof that you can achieve anything in life if you really want it. My dad was a tennis coach and I started playing when I was three or four years old together with Mirza Basic, another Bosnian player who is also competing at Roland Garros this year. Bosnia Herzegovina is a country that can’t offer any support to athletes, our Federation can’t afford it. My parents had to sacrifice a lot to finance my tennis career and I am proud of what I have achieved so far,” Dzumhur said.
The biggest upset of the day materialized in the women’s tournament, with the unexpected defeat of two-time Italian Open champion Elina Svitolina against Mihaela Buzarnescu of Romania. In my opinion, Svitolina’s defeat was more surprising than Grigor Dimitrov’s loss to Fernando Verdasco. The Bulgarian never played well at Roland Garros and this year was no exception. Verdasco is not new to this kind of upsets, in fact last year the Spaniard eliminated Zverev from the tournament.
Another surprising result came from the match between No. 72-ranked Marco Cecchinato of Italy and No. 10-seed Pablo Carreno Busta of Spain. The Italian surprisingly climbed back after losing the first set and going down a break in the second and ended up dominating the third and fourth sets. Cecchinato showed great determination and personality throughout the entire match and absolutely deserved to advance to the second week of a major for the first time in his career. Chapeau!
The Palermo native has been in tremendous form during this year’s clay-court season, winning his first ATP title in Budapest, upsetting his higher-ranked fellow countryman Fabio Fognini in Munich and qualifying for a bunch of big events.
Cecchinato will face the winner of Goffin-Monfils in the round of 16. Marco lost to Goffin a couple of weeks ago in Rome in quite a strange match, during which Goffin squandered the first set 7-5 after leading 5-0, but then won the second and third sets 6-2, 6-2.
Only a handful of people probably remember that Cecchinato was very lucky to emerge unscathed from a horrible situation regarding a challenger match played in Morocco in October 2015. Cecchinato and his opponent Kamil Majchrzak of Poland were investigated for match-fixing. The Pole was suspended for two years while the Italian was at first suspended for 18 months and fined for 40,000 euro, but then a second verdict reduced his suspension to only 12 months and his fine to 20,000 euro. Following on from the reduction in his sentence, Cecchinato’s ban was fully overturned in the end, primarily due to a glitch in the Italian judicial system.
Today Marco doesn’t want to even mention that incident anymore. He says that the episode is part of his past and he has finally put it behind him.
If No. 18-ranked Fabio Fognini prevails over No. 17-ranked Kyle Edmund in a close round of 32 match, Italy will have two men in the round of 16 at Roland Garros for the first time since 1976, when Adriano Panatta won the title and Corrado Barazzutti lost in the round of 16.
(Article translation provided by T&L Global – Translation & Language Solutions – www.t-lglobal.com )
