Mallorca (Spain), (Asian independent) Ilya Ivashka, playing as a neutral, scored an easy 6-4, 6-1 victory against Emil Ruusuvuori of Finland on Monday to set up a second-round clash with second seed Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece at the Mallorca Championships.
Ivashka’s first-round victory at the ATP 250 event in Spain came on a day when he rose to a career-high No. 40 in the ATP Rankings. The 28-year-old celebrated with a clinical performance against Ruusuvuori, breaking the Finn’s serve four times in an 88-minute victory to extend his lead in the pair’s ATP head-to-head series to 5-0, according to a report on the ATP website.
Tsitsipas and Ivashka’s two previous tour-level meetings have both come in 2022. The Greek claimed a straight-sets win on hard in Rotterdam in February and backed that up with a three-set triumph on the clay in Barcelona in April, the report said.
Meanwhile, in other matches of the day, Benjamin Bonzi of France and Tallon Griekspoor of the Netherlands too made it to the second round.
Bonzi advanced to the second round after Chilean qualifier Alejandro Tabilo retired with the Frenchman leading 6-3, 4-2. He thus set up a meeting with third seed Denis Shapovalov.
It will be a maiden tour-level meeting for Shapovalov and Bonzi at a tournament where both are appearing for the first time.
Griekspoor defeated Spanish veteran Feliciano Lopez in two hard-fought sets, winning 7-6(3), and 7-6(3) to reach the second round.
