Austria’s Dominic Thiem serves the ball to Serbia’s Laslo Djere during the Rio Open tennis tournament, Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2019. Thiem lost. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)
Austria’s Dominic Thiem serves the ball to Serbia’s Laslo Djere during the Rio Open tennis tournament, Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2019. Thiem lost. (AP Photo/Leo Correa)Associated Press

Tennis: 2nd round matches from Delray and Rio

Rio has only one top-seeded player left.

Delray Beach Open
Men’s Singles Second Round

Guillermo Garcia-Lopez over Mackie McDonald
It’d be nice for Mackie McDonald, the young American from UCLA, to follow up his good first round win here over Taylor Fritz with another, but Guillermo Garcia-Lopez has too much experience and too much savvy to go down to the 23-year-old. In a match that will be close and go three sets, I expect the 35-year-old Spaniard to take a close one and move on to the quarters.

Rio Open
Men’s Second Round

Joao Sousa over Casper Rudd
What’s going on down in the Rio clay? Who knows, but one thing is for sure: if you are (or were) a seed here, that’s bad. In this 32-man draw, eight men were seeded, and all but one lost their first round match here. That’s right! Let’s count ‘em:

Dominc Thiem lost to Laslo Djere
Fabio Fognini lost to Felix Auger-Aliassime
Marco Cecchinato lost to Aljaz Bedene
Diego Schwartzman lost to Pablo Cuevas
Dusan Lajovic lost to Cameron Norrie
Malek Jaziri lost to Federico Delbonis
Nicolas Jarry lost to Roberto Carballes Baena

The only seed to win a first round match was 5th seeded Joao Sousa, who topped Guido Pella in a tough three-setter, to set up this second round encounter with 20-year-old Casper Rudd, the 135th ranked player from Norway. Based on the wackiness going on on the Brazillian red clay I might be best staying away from this match, but I think Sousa has too many weapons and is too steady for the youngster from Oslo. Sousa has been succeeding lately by being the better player on the court, and I think he’ll top Rudd and move into the quarters now that he’s the tournament favorite.

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