Stefanos Tsitsipas defeated Martin Damm 6-4, 6-4 in Montreal on Tuesday, advancing to the second round of the ATP Masters 1000 tournament, where he will face Joao Fonseca.
Tsitsipas did not face major problems against Damm, beating him in one hour and 27 minutes of play.
The win sent him cleanly into the round of 64 at the Montreal Masters 1000, where Joao Fonseca, seeded No. 22, awaited.
Both players had begun their run in the tournament from qualifying, and Tuesday's match was their first meeting on the tour. Tsitsipas was clearly the better player and, in the first set, was the only one of the two to threaten a break. He missed chances in the 1st and 5th games before finally converting a break in the 9th game to lead 5-4.
In the next game he fell behind 15-30 but won the following three points to close out the set without further trouble.
Damm answered briefly with a break of his own at the start of the second set to move ahead 2-0 in games, but Tsitsipas quickly erased the danger. He dominated the next stretch of the match, winning five straight games to build a 5-2 cushion. He nearly ran into trouble at the finish, though, failing to close out the match the first time he served for it, losing two match points and being broken. He later found himself serving at 5-4, 0-30. At that critical moment he won four points in a row and converted his third match point to finish the match before things turned dangerous.
Tsitsipas's form this season
Tsitsipas confirmed he is in good form. His last clay-court tournament of the year, in Gstaad, Switzerland, ended with him as champion. He then moved to hard courts, where his first match was a three-set loss to Alex de Minaur in Washington. He then traveled to Montreal, where he already has two wins after starting from qualifying.
Second meeting with Fonseca
If he keeps winning, Tsitsipas will have a significant opportunity, since this Masters event has many notable absences. His match against Fonseca will be their second career meeting, following their Davis Cup encounter last year in Athens, where Tsitsipas came close to winning but let the match slip away. In that painful defeat he also suffered the injury that kept him out for the rest of that season.
The match against Fonseca is scheduled for Wednesday, August 5, with the exact time to be announced later.
