Canada’s Felix Auger-Aliassime in action during his round of 32 match against China’s Zhizhen Zhang. Photo: REUTERS
DUBAI:
Felix Auger-Aliassime of Canada returned to the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships and worked to pull out a 6-3, 7-6 (4) opening-round win over China’s Zhizhen Zhang on Monday.
Auger-Aliassime was a finalist in 2025 and lost to Greek Stefanos Tsitsipas. On Monday, he saved all four break points he faced but Zhang saved five match points — two in the 10th game of the second set and three more in the 12th to force the tiebreaker.
Auger-Aliassime’s next opponent will be French qualifier Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard, who edged Tunisian wild card Moez Echargui 7-6 (3), 6-7 (3), 7-6 (4). Mpetshi Perricard hit 29 aces in the two-hour, 36-minute marathon.
British No. 4 seed Jack Draper beat French qualifier Quentin Halys 7-6 (8), 6-3, and Swiss wild card Stan Wawrinka beat fellow wild card Benjamin Hassan of Lebanon 7-5, 6-3.
BCI Seguros Chile Open
Germany’s Yannick Hanfmann won the first seven games of his first-round match and beat Dusan Lajovic of Serbia 6-0, 6-3 in Santiago, Chile.
Hanfmann had a 22-9 edge in winners and overcame 24 unforced errors in a tidy 74 minutes. No. 7 seed Francisco Comesana, meanwhile, needed two hours and 51 minutes to get past Spaniard Pedro Martinez 6-4, 2-6, 7-6 (4). Comesana saved one match point in the third set to stay alive.
Comesana’s second-round opponent will be Italian qualifier Andrea Pellegrino, who beat Argentine qualifier Alex Barrena 6-2, 2-6, 6-1. In the last match of the Croatian qualifier Dino Prizmic downed Chile’s Nicolas Jarry 6-4, 5-7, 6-2.
Abierto Mexicano Telcel
Qualifier Patrick Kypson earned his first ATP Tour-level victory in just short of two years, upsetting Alex de Minaur 6-1, 6-7 (4), 7-6 (4) in the first round at Acapulco, Mexico.
Kypson, a 26-year-old North Carolina native who is ranked 103rd in the world, defeated a player ranked in the world’s Top 10 for the first time. And he handled a player with an impressive history at the event, as de Minaur was the Acapulco champion in 2023 and 2024.
de Minaur served for the match at 5-4 in the third set, but Kypson converted his lone break point of the set to put even and ultimately won in a tiebreaker.
Spain’s Rafael Jodar defeated seventh-seeded Cameron Norrie of Great Britain 6-3, 6-2 in the day’s other upset. Fourth-seeded Alejandro Davidovich Fokina of Spain, sixth-seeded Valentin Vacherot of Monaco, Serbia’s Miomir Kecmanovic and the U.S. duo of Brandon Nakashima and Aleksandar Kovacevic also advanced.
