Miraculously, Rune reaches the third round!
Holger Rune went through all kinds of emotions on Thursday. Faced with a great Flavio Cobolli (53rd), he came very close to going out. After a match lasting almost 4 hours, the Dane was able to let his immense relief explode at the end of a tie-break win in the last set (6-4, 6-3, 3-6, 3-6, 7-6 in 3h57).
After an imperious start to the match, in which he took a commanding lead to go two sets to nil, he began to hesitate. Cobolli took advantage. Releasing his shots, the Italian strung together a series of marvellous winners to take the third and fourth sets by a wide margin.
Undaunted, the 53rd-ranked player in the world continued to play with offensive intent. Untouchable on serve and extremely percussive from the baseline, he kept creating break-point opportunities. But Rune never gave up. Without playing his best tennis, he continued to encourage himself, dropping a few wonderful shots and even saving four match points. In a decisive super tie-break, the world number 13 was, rather like the rest of the match, well behind (5-0) before finally winning 10 of the last 12 points to claim victory.
As stuttering as ever, the 21-year-old once again showed his immense fighting spirit to get out of a match that was well and truly on the rocks. He will now face the winner of the match between Khachanov and Kovalik in the third round.
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