With Donskoy’s impressive victory over sixth seed Borna Coric, three out of three Russian players have booked their places in the second round of the Kremlin Cup. The home fans have long awaited some joy in Moscow, as they haven’t seen a local player lift the trophy since 2009, when Youzhny claimed the crown, coming after five previous years of Russian victors (Kunitsyn ’08, Davydenko ’04, ’06 & ’07 and Andreev ’05). All three players are assured to be joined by another Russian in the last sixteen as Youzhny and Karatsev square off in the first round tomorrow.
Also in action today Pablo Cuevas was only on court for 25 minutes after his opponent, Pere Riba, retired when he was 6-1 down. The Uruguayan, who had already beaten the Spaniard four times in his career, will continue to push for a place amongst the top 32 in the rankings (he currently lies in 38th) when he faces Robin Haase in the next round after the Dutchmen knocked out Dusan Lajovic in straight sets. Haase and Cuevas have met each other twice previously; Cuevas took their first meeting in a Challenger on clay back in 2007 and Haase won their most recent encounter in 2011 on the hard courts of Auckland.
The other match played today presented a huge chance for both Marsel Ilhan and Tatsuma Ito to reach the second round of an ATP Tour event, something that the Turk (ranked 97) and the Japanese player (119) aren’t too accustomed to. Ilhan displayed a little too much firepower for his counterpart and took the clash 6-3, 6-4. The reward for Ilhan is a second round match-up with last year’s beaten finalist Roberto Bautista.
Still to play tonight is Russia’s big hope, the extremely exciting eighteen year old Andrey Rublev against public enemy number one for the night, Mikhail Kukushkin
