Delbonis Gives Argentina Winning Start Against Greece
Federico Delbonis continued his perfect start to the season Monday at ATP Cup, overcoming Michail Pervolarakis 7-6(5), 6-1 to give Argentina a 1-0 lead against Greece in Group D in Sydney.
The World No. 44 earned victory on his ATP Cup debut against Georgia’s Aleksandre Metreveli on Saturday and backed this up against Pervolarkis, breaking three times to triumph after one hour and 33 minutes on Ken Rosewall Arena.
“Michail impressed me a lot,” Delbonis said in his on-court interview. “Especially in the first set when he tried to push his backhand to my forehand and on every forehand, he tried to go to the net and I was a bit uncomfortable with that. But I took that first set. I am very happy to take a bit of the pressure off Diego.”
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The 31-year-old, who reached tour-level semi-finals in Santiago, Belgrade and Hamburg last year, battled back from 2/4 down in the second-set tie-break against the World No. 399, before he raised his level in the second set, hitting with greater consistency to give Argentina a strong start.
Diego Schwartzman will aim to seal the tie in the second singles rubber, but faces a tricky task against World No. 4 Stefanos Tsitsipas, with the pair tied at 1-1 in their ATP Head2Head series.
ATP Cup format sees the No. 2 singles played first, followed by the No. 1 singles and the doubles. Doubles uses no-ad scoring and a match tie-break in place of a third set.
Each country plays three matches in group play from 1-6 January across Ken Rosewall Arena and Qudos Bank Arena at Sydney Olympic Park. One team emerges from each of the four groups to contest the two semi-finals, which will be split over two days (7-8 January), with the final played 9 January.