IN the last match of the day at the Sofia Open, Czech teenager Jonas Forejtek has caused a boilover win, defeating Croatian top 50 player Marin Cilic. The eighth seed hardly knew what hit him as the 32-year-old was belted in just 66 minutes by the 19-year-old who won 6-3 6-2.

Remarkably, Forejtek is ranked 399th in the world and was on debut for the ATP Tour, having only won Davis Cup matches in the past against players outside the top 200. Mostly travelling the ITF and Challenger circuits, Forejtek has won just $30,000 USD which is a far shout from Cilic’s illustrious $28.3 million USD and 18 career ATP Tour titles.

The Croatian looked out of sorts, serving just two aces and winning only 33 per cent of his points off his second serve, and only producing an efficiency of 55 per cent to begin with, while Forejtek broke Cilic four times during the match, serving two aces himself but only dropping six points off his first serve making it tricky for the Croatian. He will have to recover quickly from his first ever ATP Tour win with a match against either Roberto Carballes Baena or Richard Gasquet in the second round.

The other seed to fall in an upset loss at Sofia was Nikoloz Basilashvili who went down to Swiss lucky loser, Marc-Andrea Huesler. The loss, which does not come as a shock at all considering the only thing the Georgian has won this side of the COVID-19 break is the worst win-loss record of any ATP Tour player. Peaking at 27th in the world after the Davis Cup in March, Basilashvili has lost nine straight matches – that is 0-9 since the Tour returned – and all bar two have been players ranked outside the top 20.

To Huesler’s credit, he started strong with an easy first set win before Basilashvili kicked into gear, but the Swiss talent held his nerve in a tight final set to win 6-1 4-6 7-6, including an 8-6 third set tiebreak to advance through to the next round. Huesler was hard to contain on serve, producing 22 aces for only three double faults, winning 80 and 64 per cent of his first and second serve points. The world number 149 moves on to play the winner of Next-Gen young gun Jannik Sinner or Hungary’s Marton Fucsovics.

In-form Frenchman Adrian Mannarino was able to hold off determined Slovenian Martin Klizan, but did not have it much easier with the fifth seed winning 3-6 6-1 7-5 in a come-from-behind win that lasted two hours and 10 minutes. Mannarino served 10 aces and won 74 and 54 per cent of his first and second serve points, only marginally higher than Klizan’s 73 and 50 per cent respectively.

Also through to the second round in a third set tiebreaker win was Canadian Vasek Pospisil who joined compatriots and top two seeds, Denis Shapovalov and Felix Auger-Aliassime in the Round of 16. Pospisil held off Ukrainian Ilya Marchenko 6-2 5-7 7-6, including a 7-5 tiebreaker in the decider to advance through to the next round. He served eight aces and won 79 per cent of his first serve points, also saving eight of 10 break point opportunities. He broke his opponent three times, but it all came down to the final set tiebreaker before he could emerge victorious.

In other results, Belarusian Egor Gerasimov needed three sets to defeat Serbian qualifier Viktor Troicki, as did Italian Salvatore Caruso over Bulgarian Dimitar Kuzmanov with the latter playing in front of home fans. In the final match for the day, Russian qualifier Aslan Karatsev continued his recent solid form to defeat fellow qualifier, Japan’s Taro Daniel 7-6 6-1 to book a spot in the Round of 16.