Stefanos Tsitsipas overcomes an injured Davidovich Fokina in Rotterdam

Top seed Stefanos Tsitsipas struggled early in the match but found his rhythm, later on, to defeat Davidovich Fokina 7-5 6-7(1) 6-4.

Early on it was a bit of a struggle for Tsitsipas who was not playing too well. Fokina forced a lot of balls onto his backhand and he did not handle it well committing quite a few errors. The forehand was erratic and times as well and that is why he dropped an early 2-0 lead. The lead came after several consecutive mistakes by Fokina himself.

We saw multiple breaks in the match but the most crucial one came at 5-4 for Fokina when the Spaniard served for the match. He lost his serve and that started a great run by Tsitsipas who would close out the first set with 7-5. A good result for Tsitsipas who realistically should have lost it.

The 2nd set started with both players playing rather well. It was somewhat surprising that Fokina was playing that well as he sustained a leg injury earlier in the match which forced him to take two medical timeouts. The Spaniard was clearly in pain but continued the match playing rather brave. He dropped his serve midway through the set giving Tsitsipas the 4-2 lead but battled back to make it 4-3.

We went to the tiebreak and Tsitsipas completely meltdown in it allowing Fokina to run away with it 7-1. In the 3rd set, we saw a proper battle between the players and it was only late that Tsitsipas was able to pull away. Fokina ran out of fuel towards the end and the Greek survives a very uncomfortable match for him.