Monfils claims first win against Thiem in Mallorca
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Monfils came into the match with an 0-6 Lexus ATP Head2Head record against the Austrian, but fired 13 aces, won 90 per cent of first-serve points and did not face a break point en route to a 6-3, 7-6(3) win. /p
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p"It was my first grass match for three years and I felt I had to serve good and be aggressive against Dominic," Monfils said. "The weather is good, the stadium was full and I really like the vibes here. Now I'll try to win again. It would be great to have two wins in a row under the belt."/p
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The 37-year-old Frenchman advances to play Spaniard a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/roberto-carballes-baena/cf59/overview'Roberto Carballes Baena/a, who defeated countryman a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/pablo-carreno-busta/cd85/overview'Pablo Carreno Busta/a in a third-set tie-break on Sunday. Improving to 14-13 on the year, Monfils seeks to reach his first quarter-final since making the Doha semi-finals in February. /p
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Thiem, who has announced that the 2024 season will be his last, was acknowledged by the tournament during a brief post-match ceremony. ldquo;I have been here many times before the tournament and twice for the tournament and it has been great,rdquo; Thiem said. ldquo;Irsquo;m really looking forward to coming back to this nice club to watch the tournament in the future.rdquo; /p
blockquote class="twitter-tweet"p lang="en" dir="ltr"W on grass ✅a href="https://twitter.com/Gael_Monfils?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"@Gael_Monfils/a playing in his first grass court tournament since 2021 a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/tournaments/wimbledon/540/overview'Wimbledon/a gets the win over Thiem!a href="https://twitter.com/MallorcaChamps?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"@MallorcaChamps/a | a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MallorcaChampionships?src=hashamp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"#MallorcaChampionships/a a href="https://t.co/wzEL6Hnhq6"pic.twitter.com/wzEL6Hnhq6/a/pmdash; ATP Tour (@atptour) a href="https://twitter.com/atptour/status/1805292461947785390?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"June 24, 2024/a/blockquote script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"/script
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Earlier, Italian veteran a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/fabio-fognini/f510/overview'Fabio Fognini/a saved three of four break points faced to defeat Dutch lucky loser a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/gijs-brouwer/bo10/overview'Gijs Brouwer/a 7-6(4), 7-6(5). /p
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Australian a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/rinky-hijikata/h0bh/overview'Rinky Hijikata/a, who comes into the week just five places below his career-high PIF ATP Ranking of 70 after last week reaching the Queenrsquo;s quarter-finals, defeated a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/luca-nardi/n0bg/overview'Luca Nardi/a 6-2, 2-6, 7-5 after seeing the Italian save 14 of 18 break points faced. /p
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