The 4th-seeded Andrey Rublev (Russia) and 6th-seeded Holger Rune (Denmark) advanced to the second round of the ATP 500 Barcelona Open tennis tournament with a prize money of 2,889,200 EUR.
Andrey Rublev easily defeated qualifier Jesper De Jong (Netherlands) by 2-0 (6:1, 6:3) in 65 minutes. His next opponent will be the winner of the match between Stan Wawrinka (Switzerland) and Alejandro Davidovich Fokina (Spain).
The 21-year-old Holger Rune hit 28 winners and won against the home team’s representative Albert Ramos-Vinolas by 2-0 (7:5, 6:4).
The Norwegian was forced to withdraw from the ATP Masters 1000 Monte Carlo last week due to food poisoning, but has now fully recovered.
“Today I did some things right, some things wrong. I found it was harder to get used to the clay courts this year. But I accepted the challenge and I’m ready to make a good start after a difficult week in Monaco. I’m happy to be healthy”, said Holger Rune after the match.
In other matches on the day’s schedule, American Sebastian Korda (USA) eliminated Matteo Arnaldi (Italy) by 2-1 (3:6, 6:3, 6:2), and Pedro Martinez (Spain) won against Brandon Nakashima (USA) by 2-1 (5:7, 7:5, 6:4) in 3:18 hours.
Defending champion Casper Ruud (Norway) is the second seed in the draw and will start against qualifier Daniel Elahi Galan (Colombia), while the leader in the draw is Carlos Alcaraz (Spain), champion for 2022 and 2023, who starts against another tennis player who went through the qualifiers – Ethan Quinn (USA).
