Stefanos Tsitsipas was in high spirits and fist pumping on Wednesday after booking his place in the third round at Roland Garros for the first time.
The sixth seed didn’t have things his own way, but weathered the pressure against Bolivian Hugo Dellien, who was making his Grand Slam championship debut this week, in a 4-6, 6-0, 6-3, 7-5 victory over two hours and 49 minutes. He now faces Filip Krajinovic of Serbia.
Speaking about what went through his mind after the first set, Tsitsipas admitted, “I started thinking what went wrong in the first set. That [bathroom] break helped me. So I went inside mentally prepared to fight more, and I was aware of the situation I was at. Once I got myself into the right mindset, things seemed to flow my way. And from there, winning the [second] set 6-0 was good confidence boost for me. Obviously, after that, he didn’t want to give up. He fought as much as he could. But I seemed to prevail at the end.”
View Infosys MatchBeats Of Tsitsipas’ Win
Tsitsipas let slip a 2-0 advantage at the start of the match, but powered through the second and third sets. The 20-year-old then recovered from 2-4 down in the fourth set and finally converted his fourth match point to improve to a 31-11 record in 2019.
Tsitsipas, who is the third Greek man to reach the third round in Paris, following in the footsteps of Lazaros Stalios in 1936 and Nicky Kalogeropoulos in 1965 and 1967, has picked up two ATP Tour trophies this season at the Open 13 Provence (d. Kukushkin) and at the Millennium Estoril Open (d. Cuevas).
Later in the day, Krajinovic hit 87 winners to scrape past Spain’s Roberto Carballes Baena 6-4, 6-4, 6-7(1), 3-6, 8-6 in four hours and 15 minutes. Krajinovic, appearing in the Roland Garros main draw for only the third time (also 2012, 2015), first held one match point on serve at 6-5, 40/30 in the third set.
Read: Krajinovic, 2017 Paris Masters Finalist, Is Finally Relaxed
