MADRID, 14 Mar. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Spanish tennis player Jaume Munar has given the surprise by beating his compatriot Pablo Carreño (4-6, 6-4, 7-6 (4)), number 16 in the world, in the second round of the Indian Wells tournament (United States ), the first ATP Masters 1,000 of the year and played on hard court, and advances for the first time to the third instance of the North American contest.
The 24-year-old Spaniard, number 99 in the ATP ranking, recovered from a lost first set and, after wasting his first match ball of the third set, survived the three match points that the Spaniard had to win the crash.
Now, he will face the American Taylor Fritz, number 20 in the world and who settled his pass after beating the Pole Kamil Majchrzak (6-1, 6-1) in an unprecedented third-round duel, which has never set foot in the tournament. .
A solitary break in the third game was enough for Carreño to win the first set and look for victory on the fast track in the second. However, Munar also used a single ‘break’ in the last game to force the third and final set.
In it, the Spaniard did not let the player from Gijón confirm the break in the first game, neither the 3-3 nor the 5-5, responding to all of them with a counterbreak. The Asturian saved a ‘match point’ with his serve at 4-5, and then Munar saved three match points in the game at 6-5 and forced sudden death.
In it, he hit two winning shots that gave him, after two hours and 58 minutes of fighting, his best ranking victory since he beat the then number three in the world, the German, Alexander Zverev, in the 2019 Marrakech tournament.