Medvedev Falls In Grass Opener To Struff In Halle; Federer v Auger-Aliassime Wed.

A day after the second seed Stefanos Tsitsipas withdrew, the Halle grass event lost it’s top seed Daniil Medvedev today to home German 7-6(6), 6-3.

Medvedev led 5-2 in the first until Struff charged back.

“This is the biggest win Rankings wise of my career and to do it here on home soil is very special,” said Struff. “I live only an hour from here.

“He served for the set at 6-5 and twice went for an ace on a second serve and I put returns in at 30/30 and 30-40. I then played a very good tie-break and at 5-1 up in the second set, I thought about being up 5-1 last week against Diego Schwartzman. I lost the set in the tie-break, after having seven set points, so it was definitely in my head. It’s not something you can get out of your head easily.”

The 25-year-old Russian has never excelled on the grass. Medvedev has never made week 2 at Wimbledon (he did beat Stan Wawrinka there in 2017) and has two career other grass semifinals.

Alexander Zverev, Kei Nishikori and Andrey Rublev were also winners.

Tomorrow, after a positive start to his grass season Monday, Roger Federer returns to take on the young Canadian Felix Auger-Aliassime for a first time.

Auger-Aliassime won his opener today today Hubert Hurkacz 6-3, 7-5. After, he spoke about the meeting with Federer.

“It’s cool. To be honest it’s a great test for me. I’ve never played Roger before. We practiced a couple of years ago in Dubai, but I never had a chance to play him in a tournament, so it’s good,” said Auger-Aliassime who shares an August 8th birthday with the Swiss. “Of course he’s a favorite here, he’s won 10 times. It’s going to be a good test for me to see where my game is at on the grass.

“If I want to give myself chances to win, I will have to dictate the points that I can dictate, starting from my serve. If I can protect my service games and be aggressive behind my serve, that’s going to help me a lot,” he added. “And then we’ll see on the return what I can do to create myself opportunities. Of course it’s going to be tough, because he does put you out of your comfort zone.

Auger-Aliassime just came off a loss in the Stuttgart final.