Viktor Troicki secured just his third win in nine matches since the 2017 Rolex Shanghai Masters to beat former Top 10 player Ernests Gulbis 6-3, 6-7(2), 6-3 at the Diema Xtra Sofia Open on Tuesday.

The 31-year-old started strong with an early break of serve before closing out the opener to love with confidence. The second set saw dominant serving from both men, with none of the 12 games reaching deuce before Gulbis dominated the tie-break to force a decider.

Troicki continued his dominant serving in the third set, and after breaking the Latvian in the fourth game, served out the match to love five games later to end Gulbis’ challenge. Troicki did not face a single break point in the one-hour, 54-minute contest and will now face Uzbekistan’s Denis Istomin for a place in the quarter-finals.

Istomin scored a fourth win of the season to beat Bulgarian wild card Adrian Andreev 6-3, 6-4. The Uzbek was broken on three occasions and let 5-1 and 2-0 leads in the first and second sets slip, but broke his opponent five times in the one-hour, 18-minute encounter to set up the second-round meeting with Troicki.

It was also a successful day for qualifiers at the Diema Xtra Sofia Open, who won the first three completed singles matches of the day.

Mirza Basic successfully handled the difficulty of facing a new opponent to beat lucky loser Florian Mayer 6-4, 6-1 after Sergiy Stakhovsky withdrew from the tournament due to illness. Martin Klizan booked a second round meeting against No.1 seed Stan Wawrinka after safely navigating a tough first set en route to a 7-5, 6-1 win over wild card Alexander Donski. Klizan’s compatriot Jozef Kovalik also had reason for celebration after upsetting Romania’s Radu Albot 6-3, 6-3.

In doubles action, Nikola Mektic and Alexander Peya notched their second win of 2018 in 53 minutes with a 6-2, 6-4 win over Russian duo Evgeny Donskoy and Mikhail Youzhny. The second seeds will next meet Maximilian Marterer and Joao Sousa who stormed past the Bulgarian team of Radoslav Shandarov and Vasil Shandarov 6-1, 6-2 in 45 minutes.

Third seeds Nicholas Monroe and John-Patrick Smith came from a set down to beat Romania’s Marius Copil and Florin Mergea 4-6, 6-1, 10-6. Scott Lipsky and Divij Sharan also advanced with a 6-4, 6-4 victory over Dimitar Kuzmanov and Vasko Mladenov.

Tennis players are always at the center of the ATP World Tour’s world. But this week at the Ecuador Open in Quito, the country’s capital, the competitors paid a visit to the actual center of the Earth at the equator.

Gael Monfils, his doubles partner Dorian Descloix, No. 1 Chilean Nicolas Jarry and home favourite Roberto Quiroz — the No. 1 player from Ecuador — played mini tennis on the equator during a visit to the Mitad del Mundo on Monday, where government officials presented the quartet with sombreros de paja toquilla — Ecuadorian hats.

All of the players attempted to do something that cannot be done except on the equator: balancing an egg on a nail. Only Jarry was successful with his effort, but all of the stars had a blast trying. They also learned how cacao is turned into chocolate and performed ‘Limpia’, a spiritual ritual led by a Shaman that is meant to release bad energies.

They will hope that pay dividends this week in Quito, with the first ATP World Tour clay-court title of the season on the line.

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Thomaz Bellucci attempted to beat Victor Estrella Burgos at the Ecuador Open in each of its first three editions (2015 SF, 2016 F, 2017 SF), but the Brazilian failed each time. Estrella Burgos would go on to win the Quito trophy all three years.

But after winning the first set against the Dominican on Monday evening and losing just three points through his first four service games in the second set, would the fourth time be the charm for Bellucci?

Not so fast. The three-time defending champion Estrella Burgos battled back to beat the Brazilian for the fourth time in Quito in four years 4-6, 6-4, 6-2 in one hour, 55 minutes to deny Bellucci his 200th tour-level victory.

It was the Dominican’s first tour-level win this season after only claiming a combined five games in Doha (l. to Gasquet) and Melbourne Park (l. to Nadal). World No. 86 Estrella Burgos is the only player in history to win three titles at one event and not own a tour-level trophy anywhere else.

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While Bellucci could not hit his milestone, #NextGenATP Frenchman Corentin Moutet did. The 18-year-old bounced back after failing to serve out the match at 6-4, 5-4 to defeat Adrian Menendez-Maceiras 6-4, 6-7(5), 6-2 to claim his first ATP World Tour match win.

“I’m really happy. It was a really good match,” Moutet said. “I’m really happy to win, but I’m really happy because I played a good match and I had a tough opponent who was playing really good.”

Moutet was the second-youngest player to finish inside the Top 200 of the year-end ATP Rankings in 2017. So was it a dream-come-true to earn his first tour-level victory in just his second ATP World Tour event?

“I can’t say it’s a dream because it’s been a goal,” Moutet said. “I practised hard for that.”

Another #NextGenATP star, Norwegian Casper Ruud, also advanced to the second round with a 7-5, 6-0 win against Argentine Carlos Berlocq.

Fifth seed Horacio Zeballos opens play on Centre Court Tuesday against Brazilian Thiago Monteiro, while Frenchman Gael Monfils and compatriot Dorian Descloix take on top seeds Marcelo Demoliner and Purav Raja in doubles later in the day.

Daniil Medvedev, who qualified for the inaugural Next Gen ATP Finals in Milan last year, did not get off to the best start in 2018. The Russian began his season at an ATP Challenger Tour event in Playford, Australia, where he lost in the first round against World No. 379 Marinko Matosevic.

“It was very disappointing to start the year like this, because I went to the Challenger event to get some matches,” Medvedev told ATPWorldTour.com. “We knew it happens in tennis. The guy played a very good match. There will always be losses. So I just knew I had to be ready for the next one.”

The 21-year-old was more than ready, as he cruised through qualifying before winning his maiden ATP World Tour title at the Sydney International. The championship match against 18-year-old Alex de Minaur was the youngest final since Rafael Nadal beat Novak Djokovic at the 2007 BNP Paribas Open.

But Medvedev almost did not play the event at all. The right-hander was the first alternate at the ASB Classic in Auckland, where the lowest-ranked entrant in the main draw, Guido Pella, was just one spot ahead of him in the ATP Rankings. Medvedev preferred to compete in Auckland since his girlfriend had a visa to meet him in New Zealand.

But Medvedev’s coach — Gilles Cervara — told his charge on Friday right before Sydney qualifying that he should be ready to go while the 21-year-old still held out hope of gaining entry into the other tournament.

“Come on Daniil, nobody will withdraw from Auckland. We have to be ready to play here and I know you’re going to play well here because you’re going to pass the qualies and make a good tournament,” Medvedev remembers his coach telling him.

“So at the end of the tournament I told him, ‘I told you I would play good here, you didn’t believe me’!”

But while Medvedev was excited about claiming his first tour-level trophy, the reality is that those feelings do not last forever and in this case, they did not even last a week.

“It’s very tough because the first feeling is you’re very happy for a few days, you still have the happiness inside of you,” Medvedev said. “But then it’s finished because you have the next tournament, the Australian Open. [You] kind of forget about it and as soon as you lose your next match you’re already sad about it. So it’s not really in my mind, I just try to play match by match.”

Medvedev lost five days later in the second round at Melbourne Park against eventual semi-finalist Hyeon Chung.

But he has still come a long way. One of the three under-22 Russians with an ATP World Tour title (Rublev, Khachanov), Medvedev says that at 10 years old, he never imagined being a professional tennis player inside the Top 100 of the ATP Rankings.

“I thought tennis was more like a hobby for me,” Medvedev recalled. “To be in the Australian Open juniors [in 2013] for me was already a great achievement that I admired at this moment. But I just continued working because since I’ve been 16 [when] I completely committed myself to being a professional tennis player.”

And it has certainly worked out thus far. Medvedev advanced to his first ATP World Tour final last year in Chennai and soared into the Top 50 of the ATP Rankings for the first time in July. He has made the quarter-finals or better at ATP World Tour events 10 times already. But with that being said, Medvedev wants to keep improving.

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“I’m very happy with it,” Medvedev said, “But at the same time I see other guys my age stronger than me at this moment making some better results, so I just want to improve day by day and get better in the rankings.”

The World No. 56, who says he is happy to have more flexibility with his scheduling thanks to the Sydney title, faces a stiff challenge to begin his campaign this week in Montpellier, where he faces three-time event winner Richard Gasquet in the first round.

Has the title changed his mindset entering this tournament?

“Not at all,” Medvedev said. “Some people sometimes try to remind you about this and it’s funny, but here I know that I play Gasquet, who has been in the final five times here, three times the champion. So I know that to win I will need to be at my best.

“Winning Sydney does not help me a lot in this match.”