In reality everything starts from this: believing in it. Very easy from the barrier, not so easy from inside, over there, in front of those burly Czechs who smash the ball, who serve at 220 kilometers per hour, who hit the ball very flat and who have fun (so the theory went) under the roof. Are they having fun? They had fun summarizing the facts; because practice leads to very different results. It seemed complicated for this Spain of merit and faith, deprived at the last minute of Carlos Alcaraz, and the terrain tilted even more with the greyish start of the morning: Pablo Carreño, inferior to Jakub Mensik (6-3 and 6-4, in 1h22m). Yet there they are: to believe or not to believe, that is the question.
Jaume Munar burst in at lunchtime, with that good vibe he gives off and with confidence, of course. “And why not?”, he slipped, backwards, avoiding the sentence: Jiri Lehecka, knocked out (6-3 and 6-4, in 1h 22m). It would be all heads or tails, then, and then the double players appear, Marcel Granollers in front and Pedro Martínez, the hero of September, covering his back. The rivals, Tomas Machac and Mensik, scored up to five set points, three in the first set and two more in the second. However, they met the spirit of Marbellathe return of two months ago under the sun. And so the story continues, on Friday Argentina or Germany, in the semi-finals. More or less the same thing: believe not believe.
In this phase that began on an uphill climb, without Carlos Alcaraz on the payroll and with a vengeful speech that appealed to faith, Jaume Munar’s optimism was in vain: “Why focus on what we don’t have, let’s focus better on what there is”. And the Majorcan acted accordingly, thanks to the confidence he has exuded lately. By faith, today there are few like him, a balm for Spain. They call him Magicaland he believes it. That’s where it begins. Believe. Ultimately this is what it comes down to. After Pablo Carreño’s defeat against Jakub Mensik (7-5 and 6-4, after 1 hour and 30 minutes) earlier in the day, the Spaniard took to the court with the defibrillator and beat Jiri Lehecka (6-3 and 6-4, in 1 hour and 22 minutes). That is, Spain is still alive.
All on one card: double. It is contested by Marcel Granollers and Pedro Martínez against Mensik and Tomas Machac. Captain Ferrer had slipped it in two days earlier, disheartened by the last-minute absence of Carlos Alcaraz. The team was still digesting it: “Let’s get to 1-1, then let’s let Marcel decide.” In the absence of a resolution, Munar, the boy who evolves and has confidence, first took the chestnuts out of the fire: “I’m 28 years old, it was now or never.” with your best classification (36th) and after making a timely turn to her growing and increasingly offensive game, she reduced Lehecka to a base of service – she held 87% of her points on first serves – and seriousness. This time no dizziness.
He simplifies: “I wouldn’t say it was a stratospheric level on my part, but rather that it was purely indoor: one seized the opportunities, the other did not. It goes like this, serving well and taking advantage of the opportunities for the rest.” And he was referring to this year’s leap, also supported by logic: “I work on the mental aspect, but I associate it above all with the fact that once you build a better player, that becomes more accentuated.” Confides Munar, conjurer. In the wake: “We have what we have, and I think that’s a lot. Even having Nadal and Ferrer it was like that. They were the greatest exponents of that push and now it’s our turn to do the same.”
In September, Munar conceded in his opening match against Denmark, but bounced back with a vital victory on Thursday. Essential to stay alive. Lehecka is not a tasteful dish, at the same time a two-faced tennis player: the wind in his favor intimidates, but vice versa he breaks easily. Little controversy in the response and a smile from the Majorcan, necessary. In the face of pessimism (or realism), a burst of enthusiasm: “We knew that he adapts very well to this surface, he is a better player on indoor (under roof). However, it is a Davis Cup match. “I felt good, I went into the match with confidence and in the end I managed to win”, he explained and hoped, after a poor start.
Rain of “aces”
The day started with funnels in the approaches and also on the wrong foot for Spain, dragged down by the defeat of Pablo Carreño in the series opener. The man from Gijón is a guarantee of struggle, of self-love on all four sides, but still insufficient to contain those latest generation values that are so good by nature and that somehow try to make themselves seen. Mensik didn’t take long to bring out the hammer – 42 winners – and despite the Asturian’s meritorious response, a long journey and this too, with quite a bit of experience behind him, he didn’t give up. Ferrer’s team then found themselves on the ropes when the sad day in Bologna was still trying to ease.
Carreño did his best, but his reality today is what it is: work, without a doubt, but after a good season in the reserve – operating room to repair the elbow (November 2023), after eight months of break – try to get on the current high-speed train. In these, Mensik has a lot of arms and shots. The young Czech, 20, stood out in March in Miami, where he beat Novak Djokovic and won one of those few relevant prizes that Alcaraz or Sinner have not won. From then on there was a lot of intermittency, but in any case he has already managed to establish himself among the top twenty and has potential. Now, mentally speaking, it’s still green.
Perhaps the story of the first corner could have been different, if the Spaniard had confirmed the acceleration that gave him a precious centimeter of advantage, break to make it 4-3, but he immediately punctured and once he recovered the lost ground, Mensik took the helm. Good guidance from you and also decision to go online; However, and as it should be in this format, it made a difference through the service. Lots of commotion in the stands, lots of schoolchildren, and on the Czech side a torrent of aces; 20 in total and Carreño barely gets any longer. Unattainable paths. He tried, maybe he wasn’t far away. But the duel required one more point.
“It was even, I didn’t play badly. It’s not that I gave it to him, he wins it,” said Carreño, who has played only 21 matches on the ATP tour this year and has resorted to challengers to regenerate. “I broke his serve, which was the most difficult thing, but then I didn’t give him that extra something he needed. I’m satisfied, but I should have made things more difficult for him. I did well, I was there.” “He served more than two hundred an hour at all times and puts a lot of pressure on others; basically I hurt him, I was aggressive and courageous, but when he burns the ball… The serve gives you a lot. He was the best number two (for classification) of the tournament”, he concluded resignedly.
Marcel Granollers/Pedro Martinez
against
Adam Pavlasek/Tomas Machac
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