Valentin Vacherot became the first competitor from Monaco to reach the third round of the Monte-Carlo Masters since 2006 with a stunning 7-6 (6), 7-5 upset of fourth-seeded Italian Lorenzo Musetti on Wednesday.
Vacherot is the first Monegasque player to do so since his coach and half-brother, Benjamin Balleret. It was his second defeat of a top-five competitor in the last six months for Vacherot, who ranks 23rd, after he beat Novak Djokovic last October in the Rolex Shanghai Masters semifinals.
“The emotions went (up and) down a bit,” Vacherot said. “If someone told me that my first Top 5 win, second after Shanghai, will be here on a night session on the center court I have been hitting on since I was six years old, it’s nothing, nothing can be done.”
Vacherot was broken in the first game of the match, failed to convert three set points in the first and then faced a set point he had to save by winning the final three points of the opening set.
He got a break of Musetti to go up 4-3 in the second set but then was broken back when serving for the match up 5-4. He got the break right back in five points on the ensuing return game and closed out the win on his second match point with minimal drama in his final service game.
Vacherot won despite having more unforced errors (23) than winners (22). A big part of this was his 79.1% first-serve percentage. Musetti, a finalist last year in Monte Carlo, had more winners (31) but also comfortably more unforced errors (41) than his competitor.
It was a bloody day of second-round competition for seeded competitors. No. 7 Daniil Medvedev of Russia was double-bageled, 6-0, 6-0, by Italian wild card Matteo Berrettini. Medvedev had just three winners against 27 unforced errors, while Berrettini converted six of eight break-point opportunities and won 72.7% of his return points.
“I think it was one of the best performances of my life,” Berrettini said. “I think I missed three shots in the entire match and it is not easy against a tricky player like Daniil. I think the game plan was perfect and my weapons were working.
No. 10 Flavio Cobolli of Italy lost to Belgium qualifier Alexander Blockx 6-3, 6-3, 13th-seeded Russian Andrey Rublev fell 6-4, 6-1 to another Belgian competitor in Zizou Bergs and No. 16 Francisco Cerundolo of Argentina also took a straight-sets defeat to Czech player Tomas Machac, 7-6 (2), 6-3.
No. 3 Alexander Zverev of Germany and No. 11 Jiri Lehecka of Czech Republic nearly joined the ranks of losing seeds. Zverev rallied for a 4-6, 6-4, 7-5 win over Chilean qualifier Cristian Garin, and Lehecka beat Chile’s Alejandro Tabilo 4-6, 7-6 (4), 6-3.
Some seeds were able to win more comfortably. No. 6 Felix Auger-Aliassime of Canada beat Croatia’s Marin Cilic 7-6 (4), 6-3, and No. 9 Norwegian Casper Ruud defeated France’s Corentin Moutet 7-5, 6-3.
In the three matchups between unseeded competitors, Argentina’s Tomas Martin Etcheverry overcame a slow start for a 3-6, 6-3, 6-2 win over France’s Terence Atmane, Joao Fonseca of Brazil outlasted France’s Arthur Rinderknech 7-5, 4-6, 6-3 and Poland’s Hubert Hurkacz swept past Hungary’s Fabian Marozsan 6-2, 6-3 in 72 minutes.
–Field Level Media
