WHAT HAPPENED: Austrailia's Alexei Popyrin prevailed over Finland’s Emil Ruusuvuori, 6-3, 6-4, 7-6(3), to set up a second-round meeting with the No. 1 seed Jannik Sinner.
Popyrin dominated the first set. He won 12 of the first 13 points and built a 3-0 lead in just seven minutes. By the time he closed out the set, Popyrin had lost merely two points on his serve.
The second set was a bit of a teeter-totter as Popyrin was broken twice and Ruusuvuori was broken three times, but Popyrin succeeded once again, 6-4, and made 13 winners in the set.
In the third set, Ruusuvuori wasn’t about to let Popyrin take an early lead. He saved three break points in his second service game to hold and lead, 2-1. The Finn went up 3-1 when he broke Popyrin. Popyrin won the next two games, however, and they were back on serve. In the ninth game, Popyrin failed to convert a crucial break point that would have given him a 5-4 lead and allowed him to immediately serve for the set. Instead, it went to a tiebreak. Popyrin advanced to Round 2 with a smash on his second match point, to win the tiebreak, 7-3.
WHAT IT MEANS: Popyrin will now meet the No. 1 seed, Jannik Sinner, in Round 2. Since Popyrin had already slayed a titan last year, when he bested then-defending US Open champion Novak Djokovic, the Aussie didn’t seem particularly bothered by the prospect.
“If you want to win these tournaments, you have to beat one of these players at some point,” he said. “But for me, because I don’t have a number in front of my name, it just comes a round earlier than it could have been. I know my game, I know how I can play and I know the trouble I can cause, so I’m not really worried about it.”
MATCH POINT:
In their only previous meeting four years ago, Popyrin beat Sinner on clay in Madrid.
