Stefanos Tsitsipas won his maiden trophy on the grass in Mallorca today beating Roberto Bautista Agut 6-4 3-6 7-6(2).
The opening set started off well for Tsitsipas who was waltzing across the court and winning points. The Spaniard had no answers as Tsitsipas cruised to an opening 4-0 lead. After that Bautista went on a 3-0 run to pull back one break but he was unable to complete the full comeback. 6-4 for Tsitsipas largely thanks to dominating on the 2nd serve of the Spaniard winning 7 of 11 points.
The 2nd set largely followed a similar pattern with Tsitsipas taking an early break 3-1. Bautista would battle back after some unserious play by Tsitsipas and then completely turn the match upside down by breaking Stefanos at 4-3 to take a 5-3 lead. He finished it off with 6-3 to send it in to a 3rd set. The collapse was a major one for Tsitsipas as he lost 5 games in a row. And that's on grass.
He did not play that badly it was simply that Bautista won every single major rally. The 2nd set opened well for both with neither having much trouble winning their first service games. Tsitispas won his 2nd and Bautista was up 40-0 in his second but committed a few mistakes to make it deuce. Another miss gave Tsitsipas a break point and a lucky net bounce converted it.
From there Tsitsipas largely cruised behind his serve and forehand which showed up to finish off the job. That was until he actually served for the match. When he had to close it out he complicated dropping his serve and essentially send the match into a tiebreak. There he finally secured it 7-2.
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