Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner have both booked their place in the third round of the Monte-Carlo Masters with routine wins over their respective opponents.
As is often the case with the men’s singles draws at recent tournaments, the winner is widely anticipated to be one of Alcaraz or Sinner with the top two seeds expected to reach the final come April 12.
Both of their campaigns began with dominant victories with Sinner being the first of the two to take to the court.
The Italian faced World No 34 Ugo Humbert and despite the Frenchman putting up a fight to begin with, Sinner soon took control of the match.
Having won the first set 6-3, Sinner then bageled his opponent to make it 34 consecutive sets won at Masters 1000 level.
Sinner, who played on the hard court of Miami just nine days ago, spoke of how quickly he had to change his style.
“It was a good performance today from my side,” Sinner said. “You have to change your game style and how you approach certain situations, and the first match of a new tournament is never easy as I didn’t have a lot of time to prepare.
“You need to adjust to every surface. The most difficult part is understanding how much you’re going to slide when you slide.”
With the win, Sinner took a 2-1 lead over Humbert in their head to head and will face either Francisco Cerundolo or Tomas Machac in the next round.
Shortly after Sinner had dispatched Humbert in 64 minutes, reigning champion Alcaraz took to the court to face Sebastian Baez for the fourth time in their careers.
The match initially looked like a similar story to Sinner’s with Alcaraz winning the opening set 6-1 but a lapse of concentration from the Spaniard in the second opened the door to his Argentine opponent.
Baez rallied to bring the second set to 4-3 but Alcaraz broke to take a 5-3 advantage and served out for the match.
After, Alcaraz admitted he surprised even himself with his level.
“It’s been almost a year since I last played on clay. To be honest with you, I missed it. To get my socks dirty a little bit.
“So it’s been a really good start to the tournament for me. To be honest, I surprised myself with the level.
“I thought I was going to play a little bit worse, I would say. But, you know, just happy with everything I’ve done today.
“Maybe a couple of things that I just didn’t do in the second set. I just let him get going again into the match, but you know, overall, I’m just happy to play matches again on clay and happy with today’s match.”
Want more from Tennis365? Add us as a preferred source on Google to your favourites list for tennis coverage you can trust.
The post Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner progress with big Monte Carlo second round wins appeared first on Tennis365.
Leave a Reply