ORTISEI, November 7, 2016

Seventh seed Federico Gaio opened his Ortisei campaign, winning his first round match of the €64,000 Sparkassen ATP Challenger Val Gardena against local wild card and former professional Patrick Prader 6-3, 6-4 on Monday evening. The 24-year-old from Italy didn’t face a break point, converting two of his own to advance in 71 minutes.

Gaio will next face Nikola Milojevic from Serbia, who emerged victorious from the battle of the youngsters with 20-year-old Czech Zdenek Kolar, winning 6-2, 6-2. The 21-year-old from Belgrade won 74 per cent of his first service points to finish the match in 66 minutes.

Blaz Kavic rallied back from a set down to overcome Frank Dancevic of Canada, winning 1-6, 6-4, 6-4. The world number 229 from Slovenia won 88 of the 173 total points played to prevail in one hour and 38 minutes. Kavcic awaits the winner of the encounter between Germany’s Kevin Krawietz and Ramkumar Ramanathan from India.

Four Qualifiers Enter Main Draw

Andiej Kapas (photo: Marco Wanker)

The favourites of the qualifying found their way into the main draw. World number 352 Yannick Jankovits of France beat Russian Alexandr Igoshin 6-3, 6-3 to face Germany’s Marc Sieber in the opening round. Polish qualifiers Andriej Kapas and Michal Przysiezny will take on the tournament’s number two Evgeny Donskoy from Russia and fourth seed Mirza Basic from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Julien Dubail from Belgium set a first round clash with number one seed Benjamin Becker from Germany.