Holger Rune was winless on grass leading up to this match going 0-3 last year but he played a solid match to beat a very good grass player in Maxime Cressy at the Cinch Championships.
The Danish superstar made his debut on grass this year at the Cinch Championships in London. The Dane has had a somewhat shaky career on grass so far losing all three matches he played last year but he finally got the first win of his career and he did it in style. Cressy is a solid player, quite good on the grass where he won a trophy last year leaving Alexander Bublik quite unimpressed.
This year though has him struggling both generally with only 7 wins in 21 matches before this one and on grass where he is now 0-2 on the year. That is after going 11-4 on it last year including a huge win over Felix Auger-Aliassime at Wimbledon. One of those wins though came against Rune earlier this year indoors avenging the Australian Open defeat to Rune.
The match was close but it had moments where one player was clearly better than the other. That happened early in the first set as Cressy was able to break up the rhythm of Rune well taking an early 3-1 lead. He would hold it until 5-3 when he stepped up to serve for the match. Very poor game from the American and he was broken.
That was the only time he was broken in the opening set so we saw a tiebreak where the players traded early mini-break only for Rune to add another one later on and win it 7-4. It was a very close set considering that Cressy had more double faults than aces which has happened more than once before. Rune was excellent for the most part and it continued in the second where he only faced a break point in his 5th service game.
He saved one in that game and two more in the next one to keep himself against a much sharper Cressy. There weren't many double faults or any other errors as the American mostly played it safe. That was until the 12th game in which Cressy served 3 double faults and deteriorated his 1st serve percentage to below 50 %. He did win it in the end saving a match point.
It wasn't a very well-played tiebreak from Cressy who had far too many mistakes in it. Rune took an early lead and pretty much easily finished things off. The final score was 7-6(5) 7-6(3) for Rune. A tough first-ever win on grass but well-deserved for the Dane who had 10 aces and 32 winners. Cressy struggled with his serve for much of the day and ultimately that proved costly in this match which was decided by a few points.
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