Ly Hoang Nam enters second round of clay tournament in Italy

Vietnam's number one tennis player won a lucky victory at the 56° Trofeo Bonfiglio tournament, after his opponent Samuele Ramazzotti suffered an injury and had to retire midway through the third set.

Hoang Nam is the eighth seed of the tournament. Photo: Duc Dong.

Although he arrived in Italy a few days ago, Hoang Nam still seems unable to adapt to the new court. Even though his opponent is a hundred places below him according to the ITF junior rankings, he cannot create the desired match.

In the first set, Hoang Nam was even broken in the 10th game and lost 4-6. In the second set, he let the home player take a point in the first serve game. The key point of the match was probably the third game, where Hoang Nam saved three break-points to start a spectacular comeback. Continuously breaking in the fourth and seventh games, he won 6-3.

In the third deciding set, when the score was 1-1, Samuele Ramazzotti - currently ranked 134th in the ITF junior rankings - suddenly retired due to injury. Thanks to that, Hoang Nam won a ticket to the second round, meeting the winner of the match between Alberto Lim (49th junior, Philippines) - Vasil Kirkov (160th junior, USA).

Lim was Hoang Nam's partner recently. Together they won two men's doubles titles at the 25th Sarawak Chief Minister's Cup in March and the Asian Closed Junior Championship in April.

56° Trofeo Bonfiglio belongs to Group A in the ITF's annual competition system, this year gathering many of the world's top young tennis players such as Luz Orlando (2nd junior, Brazil), Taylor Fritz (3rd junior, USA), Akira Santillan (8th junior, Japan) or Chung Yongseong (9th junior, Korea).

After finishing the tournament in Milan, Hoang Nam will fly to Sweden to practice before going to France to compete in the Roland Garros junior tournament - his second Grand Slam tournament of the year.

According to VNE