Challenger from Milan, Paire out, Cecchinato ahead

Highly anticipated and already gone. Benoit Paire was the strong point of the Challenger of Milan – the Aspria Tennis Cup – but his tournament lasted 46 minutes: time to throw away the first set, lost at the tie break after serving to close it and reaching 6-3 , with three set points. And then? Five points lost in a row and the decision to leave the field: Alexey Vatutin, number 293 in the world, advances to the second round.

Cecchinato is there

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The retirement of the Frenchman closed a day full of satisfactions for Italian tennis: five out of six wins for the Azzurri players. Of the sixteen players left on the draw, seven are ours. After Federico Coria and Aleksander Shevchenko, the top seed is Marco Cecchinato, number 5 in the seeding: the Sicilian tennis player won in two sets (7-6 6-4) against Leandro Riedi and will now face Matteo Gigante. We are in the part of the board left uncovered by Paire: there is a chance to lead the way.

The other Italians

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The other two remaining seeds are Italian: Luciano Dardieri (7) and Francesco Passaro (8) reached the second round. The first won for the retirement of Inigio Cervantes in the third set, Passaro left no chance for Nicholas David Ionel: 6-4 6-0. The goal in the long run is clear: “I would like to take away the whim of playing in the US Open qualifiers. The lists close on August 1st, I still have this tournament plus four others, I think I can do it ”, the words after the match. The other Italians in the second round are Gianmarco Ferrari and Raoul Brancaccio: with the exception of Cecchinato-Gigante there is no derby, who knows that there may not be a hoarding of our tennis players even later in the tournament. Paire is already a distant memory, but the reasons for interest remain many.