Alexander Peya completed Austria’s successful day in Roland Garros: Together with his Croatian partner Nikola Mektic, the Viennese defeated the pairing Bopanna/Roger-Vasselin in two sets and is now in the semi-finals.
Oliver Marach had made the beginning of this long Tuesday on Court 1, which went almost smoothly despite the uncertain weather outlook. Marach entered the semifinal round of the doubles competition with Mate Pavic, after which Dominic Thiem did the same on the court Philippe Chatrier against Alexander Zverev.
Peya, on the other hand, had to fight hard in the first set, even though the Austrian-Croatian pairing had several chances of winning the set before the tiebreak. Mektic/Peya denied the short decision extremely focused, could not be disconcerted by an interim backlog.
Round two started with a break for the Viennese, but Mektic had to give up his service immediately. A local trough that the winners of Madrid forgot about with four games in a row. Peya could not use the first two match points, after 91 minutes the third scored 7:6 (4) and 6:2 in the field.
“This court is my favourite court on the course,” Peya told tennisnet immediately after the match. “I hope we play here again.” If Pierre-Hugues Herbert and Nicolas Mahut are defeated, this seems to be out of the question. A meeting with the French would have to be a bigger stadium.
From Peya’s point of view it was a well-deserved success: “We missed so many chances in the first set, we were actually always on the rebound, we immediately recovered from the re-break in the second set as well”.
Alexander Peya certainly enjoyed the support from home. “Thank you, Dominic,” the veteran said briefly. In fact, many fans of the Austrian single number one also came to cheer for the bullfight arena.