Large crowd already on the first day of the ATP World Tour 250 tournament in Munich. The focus of interest: Alexander Zverev, the defending champion.
By Jens Huiber from Munich
Alexander Zverev sr. has then already gone before. The father of the currently best German tennis player may have been an outstanding player in the Soviet Union at his time, in Munich the fans’ attention is focused on the junior. Autographs, Selfies, the full program – Sascha didn’t miss a beat. With a shorter haircut, Zverev jr. did the training session at MTTC Iphitos on Saturday without the distinctive headband.
Dennis Novak also enjoyed a lot of interest, the Austrian Davis Cup player opened Court 2 on Saturday against Jürgen Zopp from Argentina, who was seeded second in qualifying. 6:3, 6:2 – Novak knew how to follow up his last match in Russia. There the buddy of Dominic Thiem had defeated Andrey Rublev. The latter had been announced for the BMW Open, but is missing on the tableau.
Novak’s next opponent is Dustin Brown, who only won the German duel with Kevin Krawietz in the tiebreak of the third set.
The Center Court was initially owned by the German players on Saturday. The 17-year-old Rudi Molleker, after his intermezzo at Patrick Mouratoglou’s academy reintegrated into the DTB training programme, got off to a good start against Norbert Gombos. And still had to admit defeat in three sets. The Slovakian, ten years his senior, won 2:6, 6:2 and 6:4 and simply developed more pressure as the game continued.
Molleker is currently being looked after by Jan Velthuis, the coach who has also worked with Jürgen Melzer. Davis Cup boss Michael Kohlmann, who had looked after Molleker for a while, also supported the young German.
Speaking of Jürgen Melzer: He travelled to the Bavarian capital on Wednesday and fulfilled his obligations as a fervent supporter of FC Bayern: Last week Melzer had won a qualifying round in Barcelona, in Munich against Andrej Martin the Lower Austrian was already leading 4:2 in the third set, but then did not play any more, had to admit defeat 6:1, 3:6 and 4:6.
In any case, Jürgen Melzer will be represented in the doubles – at the side of his favourite partner Philipp Petzschner. The two won two Grand Slam tournaments together, and Petzschner has long since declared his individual career to be over due to many injuries. Melzer/Petzschner have good prospects of entering the second round, with Kevin Krawietz and Maximilian Marterer in the opening match.
However, competition in Munich is fierce: with Lukasz Kubot and Marcelo Melo, the world’s top players will be coming to the Isar. Philipp Oswald and Max Mirnyi, who have already won two tournaments in 2018, have already been seen at the MTTC Iphitos facility on Saturday.
Here the qualification tableau in Munich
Here the double tableau in Munich