Bucharest, Romania (SportsNetwork.com) – Fifth seed Guillermo Garcia-Lopez
and former top-10 star Janko Tipsarevic were among Tuesday’s opening-round
winners at the BRD Nastase Tiriac Trophy tennis event.
The Spaniard Garcia-Lopez grounded Italian qualifier Lorenzo Giustino, making
his ATP debut, 6-2, 6-0, while the wild card Serbian Tipsarevic handled an
Italian qualifier of his own, Thomas Fabbiano, 6-4, 6-3 on the red clay at
Arenele BNR.
Tipsarevic, who is still on the mend from foot surgery, is rewarded with a
second-round match against top-seeded three-time champion Gilles Simon of
France.
In other action involving seeds, No. 7 Czech Jiri Vesely got past Argentine
Diego Schwartzman 6-3, 7-6 (11-9) and No. 8 Italian Simone Bolelli topped
Kazakhstan’s Andrey Golubev 7-6 (7-3), 6-4.
Additionally, rising Austrian Andreas Haider-Maurer snuck past Croat Ivan
Dodig 7-5, 0-6, 6-4; former Australian Open runner-up Marcos Baghdatis of
Cyprus beat Belgian Steve Darcis 6-4, 6-2; Serb Dusan Lajovic bested Estonian
qualifier Jurgen Zopp 7-5, 6-1; and Croatian qualifier Nikola Mektic dismissed
Uzbekistan’s Denis Istomin 6-3, 6-4. Baghdatis will face the 2013 Bucharest
runner-up Garcia-Lopez on Wednesday.
Also on Wednesday, second-round matches will come for third-seeded towering
Croat Ivo Karlovic and fourth-seeded former Bucharest champion Lukas Rosol,
who will face Lajovic in his opener.
Bulgarian star Grigor Dimitrov, who is not defending his title this week,
defeated the Czech then-reigning champion Rosol in last year’s Bucharest
finale.
The 2015 champion will earn $86,400.
