If things didn’t go well for the former pupil of Toni Nadal, with the surprising elimination of Rafael Nadal in the second round, for the current pupil, the Canadian Felix Auger-Aliassime, Wednesday at the Australian Open it wasn’t that bad, although he did sweat to escape the zebra that the Slovakian Alex Molcan almost painted.
Like Rafa, the Canadian didn’t play well in the first two sets and was defeated in both. But Aliassime had the strength to recover and score the second comeback after losing 2-0 and defeating Molcan with the final score of 3/6, 3/6, 6/3, 6/2 and 6/2, in battle of 3h05 duration.
After flirting with elimination, the current number 7 in the world will face in the third round at Melbourne Park the winner of the match that will have the Argentine Francisco Cerundolo, seed 28, on the one hand, and the Frenchman Corentin Moutet on the other.
Aliassime’s performance in the first two sets was really not good, adding 15 winning balls and 25 unforced errors. The Canadian improved a lot in the last three, so much so that he added 23 unforced errors and calibrated once in a while, getting 44 more winners, which helped him to recover and beat Molcan for the first time in two meetings.
