Quebecer Félix Auger-Aliassime recovered from a difficult first round to begin his new season with a 1-6, 6-4, 7-5 victory against Frenchman Arthur Cazaux on Tuesday in the second round of the Adelaide International Tennis.
After being broken twice in the first set, Auger-Aliassime (29th) won all his service games in the last two sets.
Combative, Cazaux (80th) erased five break points in the second game of the final set. As in the second set, however, he lost his serve in the last game.
Auger-Aliassime hit 65 percent of his first serves, compared to 54 percent for his opposite number.
“FAA” thus won a second match in as many clashes against Cazaux. He won 7-5, 2-6 and 7-6 (4) in another hotly contested duel in Montpellier last year.
In the third round, Auger-Aliassime will cross swords with the American Marcos Giron, who took advantage of the Canadian Denis Shapovalov’s service problems to win 7-5 and 6-2.
Shapovalov (58th) slammed nine aces, but also committed 13 double faults. He placed only 49 percent of his first serves in play and won just 22 percent of rallies with his second serve.
Broken five times in 13 occasions, he won one point less than his opponent (31 against 32) when he had the balls in hand. He broke Giron (45th) twice in the first round, but was never able to take advantage.
It was a second duel between the two men on the ATP circuit and Giron triumphed each time.
Shapovalov was initially scheduled to face Auger-Aliassime in the first round, but the latter ultimately earned a bye as the fifth seed. “Shapo” finally defeated the Chinese Zhizhen Zhang (45th) 6-3 and 6-4 to obtain this meeting with Giron.
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