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Patna : World No 51 Jan Lenard-Struff, 28, Germany, defeated World No 8 and 5th seed Stefanos Tsitsipas, 20, Greece, in a three-set thriller in the 3rd round of ATP Barcelona Open 2019 at Barcelona, Spain, on April 25, 2019, late night, causing a major upset in the tournament.
Struff beat Tsitsipas 6-4, 3-6, 6-2 in the 3rd round at Barcelona Sports Center to advance to the quarter-finals of the tournament. Struff broke Tsitsipas’ service 4 times in the match while the latter broke his service twice. Tsitsipas committed 4 double faults to just 1 by Struff. Both the players won 3 games each in a row in the match.
Incidentally, Tsitsipas won more service points than Struff. Tsitsipas won 58 service points to 50 by Struff. Tsitsipas also fired 10 Aces in the match to 7 by Struff. But, Struff’ winning percentage both on his first and second serve ( 77% & 62%) was much higher than that of Tsitsipas (73 % & 42 %).
Struff had defeated World No 20 Denis Shapovalov, 20, Canada, in the first round of ATP Monte-Carlo Masters on April 15, 2019. He had also defeated World No 3 Alexander Zverev, 22, Germany, in the 3rd round of ATP Indian Wells Masters on March 12, 2019.
Struff will face top seed and 11 time champion Rafael Nadal, 32, in the quarter-finals on April 26, 2019, evening.