Native favourite
Lorenzo Musetti stumbled in his second match against Dominic Stricker who improves to 2-0 at the event so far.
Stricker easily bested Draper yesterday but today proved a much tougher task. The Swiss youngster has been the underdog in both matches so both victories were quite surprising. A combination of powerful serves with an impressive lefty forehand creates a lot of havoc on these fast courts in Milan.
Despite that, all five of the sets were decided in the tiebreak. It was a superb showdown, the best match of the event so far with Stricker winning 3-2 in the end. The difference in the first set was him serving better than Musetti and hitting the ball a bit better 7-5 in the tiebreak.
The second set was very similar but it was a very close one. Stricker barely pulled it out 8-6 as he didn't play as sharp from the baseline as in the previous set. The 3rd and 4th ones were sets where Musetti simply played better.
Everything worked for him in those sets and he was able to pull both out. The final one showed some cracks in the armour and eventually, Stricker got it done 7-3 in the tiebreak.