Second seed Paul-Henri Mathieu will now be the heavy ranking favourite in Rennes, as the Frenchman is the only seed left standing after just the second round.
After top seed Jeremy Chardy’s shock early exit in the first round to Andrey Rublev, and Evgeny Donskoy’s retirement vs Kenny de Schepper, an exodus of seeds then departed in round two.
(2) Paul-Henri Mathieu defeats Arthur de Greef 67 64 75. Mathieu may have been the only seed to move into the quarter-finals, but Belgian opponent de Greef did not make things easy for him. The world no. 142 took a close set in which he faced no break points and won more than 90% his first serve delivery. Mathieu struck in the second, saving three break points before breaking once from two opportunities. De Greef’s first serve then faltered a little in the third, and the second seed broke twice late on to move forward into the quarter-finals.
Duckhee Lee defeats (6) Lukas Rosol 63 46 63. Lee will have been disappointed to lose to Alexander Bublik in Australian Open Qualifying, but bounced back impressively to beat Rosol. The teenager Korean faced no break points in sets one and three, and that was enough to defeat the sixth seed.
Blaz Kavcic defeats (4) Sergiy Stakhovsky 64 67 76. Roger Federer may have lost to Stakhovsky once in a shock result at Wimbledon, but the Ukrainian has not shown that kind of form for some time. Now ranked outside the Top 100, Stakhovsky saw fifteen aces fired past him. The fact that Stakhovsky failed to break in the first set from seven opportunities will also hurt.
Vincent Millot defeats (5) Guido Andreozzi 76 46 62. Of all the shocks for seedings in the second round, this was probably the least suprising. Andreozzi is most comfortable on clay, and Millot plays well at these sorts of events. Millot also just missed a seeding in this event, and it was almost surprising he failed to close this one out in straight sets.
Mathias Bourgue defeats (3) Josef Kovalik 76 64. This is now an alarming set of results for Kovalik. The Slovakian lost when highly seeded in the first round of Australian Open Qualifying, and this result makes it back-to-back first round defeats. There were admittedly easier second round match-ups than that of Bourgue, who will now face Teymuraz Gabashvili in the quarter-finals.
Uladzimir Ignaitik defeats (8) Tobias Kamke. Kamke managed to turn around an alarming late 2015/early 2016 with some better results towards the latter stages of last season. However, if this result is anything to go by, the Germany cold be regressing back to that poor form. Ignatik is ranked nearly seventy places beneath Kamke, and lost in qualifying so was not in good form, making this result all the more surprising.
Teymuraz Gabashvili defeats Kenny de Schepper 64 63. De Schepper was the beneficiary of Evgeny Donskoy’s withdrawal from their match when de Schepper had led 4-1, but the tall Frenchman was unable to beat his Russian opponent. Gabashvili is an experienced player and will be a real handful for anyone left in the draw.
