Bob Larson's Daily Men's Tennis
August 11, 2024

The seeds are getting awfully thin on the ground at Sopot. As of right now, only two are left -- and only one of them is actually through to the second round.

That one is #6 seed Rafael Nadal, who ended Arnaud di Pasquale's latest comeback 6-2 6-4 -- and then talked about skipping the U. S. Open if the hardcourts at the Olympics are too hard on his feet.. But top seed Marat Safin is out; he lost 6-3 6-2 to Marc Lopez, leaving this event without a single Top 50 player.

Marc Rosset won his opening match, but said that he felt slow and weary in the second half of his match. Evidently he still felt that way in his second contest. Juan Monaco took him out 6-4 6-3.

Wildcard Lukasz Kubot proved unable to follow up his big win over Igor Andreev. Having made the crowd happy once, he lost to Franco Squillari -- who makes only his second quarterfinal of the year -- 6-2 6-3. The doubles also saw Polish wildcards go down; Kwinta and Przysiezny lost 6-3 6-3 to Cibulec and Skoch. But all the seeded teams in action advanced: #2 Arnold/Hood and #4 Garcia/Prieto in straight sets; #3 Pala and Perry, confronted with a somewhat stronger team in Bertolini and Vanhoudt, needed a third set tiebreak.