Can look forward to an attractive baptism of fire: Henry Bernet meets world number 19 Jakub Mensik in the first round of the Swiss Indoors on his debut on the ATP Tour
Keystone
18-year-old Henry Bernet from Basel will face world number 19 Jakub Mensik in the first round of his ATP Tour debut at the Swiss Indoors. Stan Wawrinka starts against Miomir Kecmanovic.
He had wished for one of the highly seeded stars, and Henry Bernet got a pretty good response. The draw for the main draw at the Swiss Indoors resulted in the Czech number 7 seed Jakub Mensik as his opponent. Mensik is one of the rising stars of the year and triumphed at the Masters 1000 tournament in Miami after beating Taylor Fritz and Novak Djokovic in the final.
Bernet’s (ATP 479) task against the 1.94 m tall, strong-serving giant will therefore be extremely difficult, but also appealing. The junior winner of the Australian Open is in the main draw of an ATP tournament for the first time thanks to a wild card and of course has nothing to lose.
22 years older than Bernet is Stan Wawrinka (ATP 137), who may be competing for the last time in Basel’s St. Jakobshalle. His task against the Serb Miomir Kecmanovic (ATP 49) is a little easier on paper, but Wawrinka has only won two matches at ATP level this year – against players outside the top 100. After all, the only duel between the two to date was not so long ago. Two and a half years ago, the Lausanne native won in two sets in Indian Wells.
Exploit by Bertola, painful defeat for Brunold
If need be, the two Swiss players will also receive support from the qualifiers, where Rémy Bertola (ATP 259) will play Frenchman Quentin Halys on Sunday for a place in the main draw. The 27-year-old from Ticino won clearly in two sets against Frenchman Adrian Mannarino (ATP 59). Mika Brunold (ATP 309), on the other hand, missed out on a similar coup in bitter fashion. The Basel player, who is six years younger, lost to world number 62 Reilly Opelka after a good three hours of play and after he was unable to capitalize on six match points in the second set tie-break, two of them on his own serve.
One duel in the first round stands out in particular: top seed Taylor Fritz, last year’s US Open finalist and world No. 4, will face Valentin Vacherot, the sensational winner of last week’s Masters 1000 tournament in Shanghai.
