After a lot of hard work, Jan-Lennard Struff has cleared his first round hurdle at the Australian Open. He used his second match point in the final fifth set.
Jan-Lennard Struff won his first round match at the Australian Open with strong nerves in a five-set thriller. After 3:50 hours of play, the 33-year-old from Warstein defeated local hero Rinky Hijikata, who was loudly cheered on by the audience, 3:6, 6:3, 6:2, 6:7 (2:7), 7:6 (10: 8) through. In the second round, the German number two, seeded 24th, will face Miomir Kecmanović (Serbia).
Struff got into the match well in a particularly long first service game and immediately secured the break. However, the local hero struck back immediately and managed another break in the course of the first set, so that he also secured the first set with 6:3.
Seagull disrupts first match point
But Manna from Warstein increasingly took control of the game, hit twice as many winners as his opponent and took the lead 2-1 after sets. In the fourth it finally went to the tiebreak, in which Hijikata looked fresher and clearly won 7:2. The fifth set had to be decided, in which Struff fought back after a break and reached the match tiebreak. He kept his nerve in this one. “Struffi” clearly missed the first match point, which was briefly delayed by a seagull on the field. In the second he benefited from a backhand mistake by Hijikata, so the German is now in the second round.
Last year, Struff had to fight his way through qualification and then lost in the first round against eventual semi-finalist Tommy Paul from the USA. This was followed by a strong season for the long-time Davis Cup player, who now wants to build on last year’s performance in Melbourne.
Daniel Altmaier, Yannick Hanfmann and Maximilian Marterer had previously failed at their respective opening hurdles. Alexander Zverev enters the tournament on Tuesday with a duel against Furtwanger Dominik Koepfer (from 9 a.m./Eurosport and DAZN).