Gilles Simon edged out German wildcard Maximillian Marterer 6-2 4-6 6-4 while Florian Mayer impressed the home crowd on day one of the German Tennis Championships after a 7-5 6-2 victory over Marco Cecchinato.
The Frenchman who has struggled for form this season took to Centre Court to take on German wildcard Maximillian Marterer. The match was an open contest as both men made the most of their opportunities on return as the match lasted just over 2 hours. However it was the more experienced Simon who took advantage to break five times and claim the contest in a three set thriller. It was a good win for Simon who needed to recover from his shocking loss in Umag last week to Cecchinato. Simon will now play Philipp Kohlschreiber or in form Andrey Rublev.
However one German that was on the winning side of the net today was Florian Mayer. He comfortably beat Marco Cecchinato 7-5 6-2 on Centre Court to delight the home crowd. With only three ranking places between them we always knew that this would be a tightly fought contest. However it was the 33 year old who eventually ran away with things as he broke the Italian’s serve four times. Mayer completed victory in 1 hour and 16 minutes to set up a clash with either Andrey Kuznetsov or second seed Pablo Cuevas.
Other results in Hamburg saw fifth seed Benoit Paire thrash returning Russian Dimitry Tursunov 6-3 6-2 in 52 minutes. Sixth seed Diego Schwartzman also won by the exact scoreline as he took out Austrian Andreas Haider-Maurer. Another Argentinian that won was Horacio Zeballos as he beat German wildcard Daniel Altmaier 7-6(2) 6-4. There were also 6-3 6-4 victories for Cedrik-Marcel Stebe and Jan-Lennard Struff over Damir Dzumhur and Evgeny Donskoy respectively.
