Portuguese tennis player beat Pedro Martínez, defeated finalist in the last edition of the Estoril Open
• Photo: Reuters/File
Nuno Borges qualified this Wednesday for the second round of the Masters 1,000 in Rome, by beating the Spaniard Pedro Martínez, a defeated finalist in the last edition of the Estoril Open.
The Portuguese tennis player, 53rd in the world rankings, defeated Martínez, who is two places higher in the ATP hierarchy, by 6-7 (7), 6-4 and 7-6 (10), in a long encounter lasting three hours and 39 minutes. minutes.
After two first sets with just one break of service, in the game that gave the second match to the Portuguese number one, the third half had four breaks in a row, with Nuno Borges wasting the moment in which he was serving to close the match at 5-4, the game in which they had the first meeting point.
In the tie-break of the decisive set, Borges managed to recover from deficits of 4-1 and 5-2 and had a match point at 6-5, which he wasted with a double fault, with Martínez not taking advantage of two opportunities. to close the qualification.
With 9-8 on the tiebreaker score, the Estoril Open finalist also ended up committing a double fault and giving the Portuguese triumph, who qualified for the second time, in eight appearances, for the second round of a Masters 1,000 , repeating what he had also done in Rome in 2023.
This was Borges’ second victory over Martínez, after, in the first clash between them, in 2021, he triumphed in the challenger Oeiras 3, also on clay.
In the next round, Borges will face Kazakh Alexander Bublik, 17th in the ATP rankings, who was exempt from the first round, in what will be the first clash between the two.
By Lusa
