The fourth seeded Philipp Kohlschreiber has already been eliminated in the first round of the ATP tournament in Sofia and will have to wait for his first success in the 2018 season.
The 34-year-old from Augsburg had to admit defeat to Bosnian qualifier Mirza Basic in 1:41 hours with 5:7,6:7 (5:7) in his opening match on Wednesday evening and won the third defeat in the third match 2018.23 days earlier Kohlschreiber had also failed at the Australian Open right from the start.
Basic, the number 129 in the ranking and thus 94 places lower than Kohlschreiber, had eliminated Lucky Loser Florian Mayer (Bayreuth) the day before. Kohli “had had a walk-through in the first round of the 561,345 Euro tournament in the Bulgarian capital Sofia.
Maximilian Marterer (Nuremberg) had already reached the round of sixteen on Wednesday afternoon. The 22-year-old won against Malek Jaziri from Tunisia 7-6 (7-4), 6-4 and will meet the Portuguese Joao Sousa in seventh place in the next round. Marterer had unexpectedly made it to the third round at the Australian Open in Melbourne in January, but was eliminated in a duel between the unseated players and Tennys Sandgren (USA).