Alejandro Davidovich defeats Ben Shelton and moves forward
Spanish tennis player Carlos Alcaraz will face Argentine Francisco Cerúndolo in the second round of the Monte Carlo tournament (Monaco), the third Masters 1,000 of the season, after the South American defeated Italian Fabio Fognini (6-0, 6-3) this Monday in the first round where Spanish Alejandro Davidovich also emerged victorious against American Ben Shelton (6-7(2), 6-2, 6-1).
The player from Murcia, exempt from the first round as the second seed, will face Cerúndolo on Wednesday after the Argentine needed just an hour to defeat the Italian player. In the first set, the ATP ranking number 22 gave his opponent a ‘bagel’, and in the second set, he broke serve twice, once in the fifth game and again in the ninth, to seal the victory.
Davidovich has won their two previous encounters on the circuit; he first defeated Cerúndolo in the first round of the Queen’s tournament in 2024 (6-1, 7-5), and this year he also beat him in the quarterfinals of the Indian Wells Masters 1,000 (6-3, 7-6(4)).
Meanwhile, Davidovich, a finalist in Monaco in 2022, advanced to the second round after coming back to win against Shelton, the eleventh seed. The player from Malaga, ranked 42nd in the world and who reached the finals in Delray Beach (United States) and Acapulco (Mexico) this year, recovered from losing the first set in a tiebreak.
In the second set, which started with a 2-0 deficit, he won six consecutive games to level the match, and in the decisive set, after an exchange of breaks at the beginning, he won four straight games to close out the match in two hours. He now awaits the winner of the match between Argentine Tomás Martín Etcheverry and Frenchman Corentin Moutet, who came through the qualifying rounds.
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