Jan-Lennard Struff was the third German tennis player to reach the round of 16 at the ATP tournament in Madrid. The 33-year-old won his third round match against the Serb Dusan Lajovic 6: 7 (2: 7), 6: 3, 6: 3.
In the fight for the quarter-final ticket at the clay court tournament, the Warsteiner meets the winner of the duel between the American Frances Tiafoe and the Argentinian Petro Cachin.
Before Struff, Olympic champions Alexander Zverev and Daniel Altmaier had already made it into the round of the top 16. Hamburg’s Zverev will meet the top seeded Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz on Tuesday, the Kempener Altmaier will face the Spaniard Jaume Munar.
Struff was actually already eliminated in the qualification, but then slipped into the main field afterwards. In the previous rounds he had already defeated the higher-ranked Lorenzo Sonego of Italy and Ben Shelton of the USA. The Davis Cup player convinced with his powerful game against the in-form Lajovic, overall he scored more than twice as many winning shots as his opponent.
“I’m extremely happy,” said Struff on “Sky” about the “brutal match” in which he fought after losing the tie-break in the first set: “I somehow managed to put him under pressure.”
Meanwhile, the number two seeded Russian Daniil Medvedev only with difficulty prevented an early exit in the 4: 6, 6: 1, 7: 5 against compatriot Alexander Shevchenko.