This Wednesday, October 28, Gastão Elias became the third and last Portuguese player to enter the second round of the singles main table at the Vale do Lobo Open, a $25 international men's tournament hosted by Premier Sports and the Federation Portuguesa de Tênis organize at Vale do Lobo Tennis Academy, in Loulé.
Returning to the ITF circuit three weeks after winning the title at the $25 tournament in Porto, the former number 57 in the world ranking (currently 441st) scored a comfortable victory over Swiss Raphael Baltensperger ( 880.º), with the partials of 6-4 and 6-1.
With the passage to the second round, Gastão Elias guaranteed, from the outset, the presence of at least one Portuguese tennis player in the quarter-finals, since on Wednesday he will meet forces with Tiago Cação (536.º).
On this journey, Nuno Borges' next opponent was also known: the Italian Raul Brancaccio (390th), who defeated the Colombian qualifier Nicolas Barrientos (786th), by 6-4 and 6-4.
Contrary to what happened on Tuesday, when the five seeded heads who took action were left out of the way, this Wednesday the favorites all advanced: Viktor Galovic (first and number 277 in the world) defeated Genaro Alberto Olivieri; Kacper Zuk (Polish who is 285th in the rankings and second seed) passed Sebastian Fanselow with 6-4 and 7-5; and Chun Hsin Tseng, who was once youth world number one and is the 288th ATP, defeated Gianluigi Quinzi (top 150 18 months ago) 6-4 6-4.
Still in singulars, who also stood out was the North American Emilio Nava. At the age of 18, the former star of the world junior circuit (in 2019 he played the Australian Open and US Open finals) overcame Dutchman Tim Van Rijthoven, with partials of 7-6(5) and 6-3, to add the name to the group of qualified for the second round.
Closing the day, the wild cards Manuel Gonçalves and Hugo Maia failed to counter the favoritism of the third seeded, Jesper De Jong and Jelle Sels, and lost 6-0 and 6-3, while Nuno Borges and Francisco Cabral signed the only Portuguese victory in the variant, by defeating the compatriots Gonçalo Falcão and Luís Faria by the partials of 6-3 and 6-1.
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