Great Britain’s Edward Corrie has progressed into the quarter-finals of the Budapest Challenger after winning his second round match.
Corrie’s was the first match of the second round to be completed on Wednesday. Corrie’s place in the main draw was a little fortuitous, as he had lost in the qualifying tournament, but made the main draw as a lucky loser replacement after Lukas Lacko, Andrey Golubev, and Grega Zemlja all pulled out with various ailments.
Reuter was a tough opponent, having beaten Evgeny Donskoy in the first round, a player who had once taken Andy Murray the distance in Indian Wells. Corrie survived the loss of the first set to win the match, taking the next two in a 46 63 64 win.
All other second round matches in Budapest followed on Thursday. Corrie’s quarter-final opponent was quickly established as Yannick Maden, a German ranked less than twenty places higher than Corrie in the rankings. He beat Blaz Kavic 63 36 64.
Incredibly, there are only two seeds remaining in the tournament, as six seeds fell before the quarter-final stages. Eighth seed Luca Vanni is the only one to make it through in the top half of the draw, defeating Croatia’s bullish Franko Skugor 64 63. Skugor had fought valiantly in the Davis Cup for Croatia, defeating Pablo Carreno Busta and taking a set from Roberto Bautista Agut. He failed to truly challenge the tall Italian though.
Sixth seed Norbert Gombos was one of only two other seeds who contested matches in the second round. He faced a tough assignment though, in former Roland Garros semi-finalist Jurgen Melzer. Melzer, in this tournament only with a protected ranking after spending much of 2016 injured, won 57 62 62.
Melzer will face the only seed to join Vanni in the quarter-finals in Marius Copil. The powerful Romanian defeated Joris De Loore 64 46 61.
Casper Ruud earned an impressive win against fellow NextGen Finals contender Duckhee Lee. The seventeen year-old Norwegian then followed that up with a 75 26 63 win against Mirza Basic. Ruud will face Alexey Vatutin after the Russian qualifier defeated another lucky loser in Gianluigi Quinzi, 16 62 62. The Italian had defeated Hungarian wildcard Attila Balazs after replacing Lukas Lacko in the draw, but could not contend with the Russian once he found his range in the second and third sets.
Marton Fucsovics was the other player to make it through, defeating Matthias Bachinger 63 63
