STARNBERG, May 16, 2021
Roger Federer will compete on clay for the first time in almost two years when he makes his tournament debut at the Gonet Geneva Open this week.
The 39-year-old will be making only his second appearance on the ATP Tour this season, following his run to the Qatar ExxonMobil Open quarter-finals in March. Federer last competed on clay at Roland Garros in 2019, when he reached the semi-finals.
Federer will be aiming to join Claudio Mezzadri (1987), Marc Rosset (1989) and Stan Wawrinka (2016-‘17) as the fourth Swiss player to lift the Geneva trophy. The 20-time Grand Slam champion is the top seed at the ATP 250 and shares the top half of the draw with in-form Norwegian Casper Ruud and five-time ATP Tour clay-court titlist Cristian Garin.
The bottom half of the Geneva draw is headlined by Denis Shapovalov, Grigor Dimitrov and Fabio Fognini. All three men are chasing their first title of the season.
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Thiem leads the field in Lyon
Dominic Thiem returns to the Open Parc Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes Lyon for the first time since 2018, when he captured the title. The World No. 4 has won 10 of his 17 tour-level titles on clay courts, but he faces stiff competition in a loaded ATP 250 field.
Second seed and World No. 5 Stefanos Tsitsipas, the recent Rolex Monte-Carlo Masters champion, has lifted two trophies on French soil, triumphing in Marseille in 2019 and 2020.
Other players to watch include World No. 10 Diego Schwartzman, David Goffin, Gael Monfils, Aslan Karatsev and #NextGenATP stars Jannik Sinner, Felix Auger-Aliassime, Lorenzo Musetti and Sebastian Korda. In popcorn first-round matches, Sinner faces Karatsev and Auger-Aliassime meets Musetti.
Le tableau officiel de cette édition 2021 ! pic.twitter.com/FErKMCQhMU
— Open Parc ARA (@OpenParcARA) May 15, 2021
