Delbonis Downs Dimitrov In Geneva

Federico Delbonis recovered from a set down to record his first victory against Grigor Dimitrov on Tuesday at the Banque Eric Sturdza Geneva Open.

The 28-year-old Argentine, who entered the first-round match with a 0-2 FedEx ATP Head2Head record against Dimitrov, converted all five break points he earned to record a 1-6, 6-4, 6-2 victory after one hour and 36 minutes. The 2015 semi-finalist (l. to Sousa) will meet defending champion Marton Fucsovics in the second round.

Last year, Fucsovics defeated Peter Gojowczyk in the championship match to become the first Hungarian to lift a tour-level title since 1982. Delbonis and Fucsovics have never met on the ATP Tour.

Dimitrov was appearing in the main draw after successfully navigating his first qualifying draw since the 2012 Rolex Paris Masters. The 2017 Nitto ATP Finals champion, who is searching for form after a right shoulder injury, had to take a wild card into qualifying after the three available main draw wild cards had already been allocated to Stan Wawrinka, Feliciano Lopez and Janko Tipsarevic.

“This week there has been a lot of focus on different things for me. Not so much on the results. I am trying new things, different positions on the court, different varieties of play and just pushing myself to a different game plan. I must admit, the first set was really good,” said Dimitrov.

“I was very, very happy with the way that I was able to execute and, for sure, in the second and third sets, I was clearly not doing the things the same as I was doing in the first set… For me, it is a positive, to be honest. This week has been great. I have been practising every single day and haven’t had one day off. I can put a lot into the storage right now for Roland Garros and obviously get out there and try to have better results.”

Portugal’s Joao Sousa, the 2015 finalist, won 80 per cent of his first-service points (51/64) to beat Leonardo Mayer of Argentina 6-3, 6-7(6), 6-4 in two hours and 17 minutes. Sousa will next face Spain’s Albert Ramos-Vinolas, who recorded his third clay-court victory against sixth seed Adrian Mannarino 6-7(2), 6-3, 6-2. Ramos-Vinolas served for the first set at 6-5, and later recovered from an 0-2 deficit in the deciding set.