By Giovanni Vianello
John Isner eased past Tommy Paul (a so-called NextGen player, born in 1997) by playing astonishingly well with his serve and his forehand. The oldest of the two American players has won the match by breaking the opponent once in the first set (in the sixth game) and twice in the second set (in the the third and in the ninth and final game).
Paul played decently, but Isner has been just too good for the NextGen player, who has never had even a single break-point in his advantage. Isner will face another NextGen in the third round, either Frances Tiafoe or Alexander Zverev.
In another night session match, Dominic Thiem gets easily got rid of the Italian Fabio Fognini with the score of 6-3 6-2. The Italian showed his usual ups and downs, both emotionally and physically. He quarreled with the umpire from the beginning of the match (The argument began when Thiem hit a forehand on the line, Fognini stopped playing giving the impression of having called Hawk-Eye, the umpire thought the Italian had actually asked the challenge, but then Fognini claimed he had not-and the replays don’t show clearly whether Fognini called the challenge or just cleaned his shirt.) and even because Fognini received a MTO. Thiem took advantage of the situations and won the match in about an hour. Thiem, in the third round, will compete against the winner of Querrey-Mannarino
In the other second-round match which was played today, Ivo Karlovic has defeated Tsonga in two sets. The Frenchman didn’t look in bright shape. Tsonga was broken once in the whole match, in the fifth game of the first set (the second set ended in a hard-fought tie-break, won 11-9 by the Croatian). The match might be remembered as one of the few that saw Karlovic hitting a winning backhand passing shot, not only because it was a backhand, but most notably because it was hit in top-spin.
