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The tennis player Holger Rune is ready for the round of 16 at the ATP 1000 tournament in Shanghai after a victory over the Czech Jiri Lehecka. Without being broken along the way, the 21-year-old Dane won the match 6-4, 7-5.
In the round of 16, 12th-seeded Rune will face Taylor Fritz. The American is number seven in the world ranking. Two previous meetings between the two have ended with a win for each – most recently for Rune earlier this year.
Although the game was better in the first than in the second set on Tuesday, it was a solid and concentrated performance from start to finish by the Dane. Rune played with great confidence in his strokes with enormous conviction in his own serves from the start. It was the Dane who was on top, but Lehecka managed to hold her serve well forward in the first set.
In his own serving games, Rune was superb, despite the fact that he did not deliver a single serve. Only once did Lehecka break even in a Danish service game. Seven points on Rune’s serve was what it came to in the first set for the Czech.
In the ninth game, Holger Rune got the serve breakthrough he had been knocking for from the first move, and soon after he safely served the set in the house. When Lehecka had problems with her right knee early in the second set, the arrow really pointed in the direction of Danish advancement. After receiving treatment, the check looked better again and the break seemed to have disrupted Rune’s good rhythm.
Immediately after the break, Lehecka played his way to his first break point in the Dane’s serve in the match, but Rune averted the problems.
“Actually, his problems made it a bit tricky for me, because I didn’t quite know where I had him. He had problems, but he could still run, so it was a bit difficult”, says the Dane in the interview on the track after the victory.
Despite a disagreement with Hawkeye along the way and a few more challenges in the game, the young Dane kept his focus on the task, even if the serve breakthrough was long overdue. At 5-5, the opportunity finally arose for Rune, and he pounced immediately. Or rather, Lehecka made a fool of himself with a double fault, after which Rune served the promotion home.
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Source: politiken.dk
