Our national Davis Cup player Alexander Vassilev qualified for the quarterfinals of the challenger in the category 50 on clay in Split, Croatia.
In a duel between left-handed players, the Bulgarian tennis player prevailed with 6:3, 6:2 over Eliakim Coulibaly from Cote d'Ivoire, who is in 286th place in the world rankings, where our representative is currently 995th.
In the first part, the finalist of the US Open Junior Championship started with a breakthrough, which, although difficult, consolidated for 2:0. Vassilev continued to dominate and in the ninth game made a second break, which closed the set.
In the second, the 18-year-old cousin of Grigor Dimitrov continued to dominate and quickly took a 4:0 lead. Then the African returned one break, but Alexander immediately made another break. Thus, at 5:1, the Sofia native served to win the match, but lost his serve. In the next game, however, Vassilev reached a match point and realized it with a wonderful passing shot.
Thus he earned 8 points for the world ranking and 1620 euros from the prize fund.
In the next round, the Bulgarian awaits the winner of the match between the seventh seed Tom Gentzsch (Germany) and the qualifier Filippo Romano (Italy).