The Titan reopens its doors to great tennis. The 29th edition of the Internazionali San Marino Open kicks off with the draw for the qualification and main drawsappointment of the ATP Challenger Tour (€ 67.960 prize money) which starts on Sunday 7 August on the courts of the Cassa di Risparmio di Montecchio Tennis Center with the first twelve qualifying matches (free admission, start set at 10 am by the supervisor Carmelo Di Dio, referee Riccardo Ragazzini), while the decisive round will then take place on Monday (from 1 pm) before the start of the main draw.

Pending the outcome of the qualifications, there are eight Italian players at the start of the main draw (four of the entertained included in the seeding), with the blindfolded proposal that immediately resulted in two tricolor derbies. One will be the protagonist Marco Cecchinatofifth seeded and in San Marino winner in 2013 of the first important title of a career that saw him reach a historic semifinal at Roland Garros 2018, put three ATP trophies on clay on the board and reach a best ranking from 16 of the world, and the 21-year-old left-handed Mattia Belluccicompeting with a wild card.

The other all-Italian head-to-head will be the one between the Faenza Federico Gaius And Matteo Arnaldione of the emerging Next Gen blues, winner this year in Francavilla of his first Challenger and number 8 in the seeding.

The Roman Flavio Cobolli (jolly), fourth force of the tournament, will debut with the Hungarian Fabian Marozsan, Matteo Gigante has “caught” the Dutch Jelle Sels, Lorenzo Giustino will have to contend at his debut with the Croatian Nino Serdarusic, seventh-seeded, while Giulio Zeppierithird favorite of the seeding, fresh from the semifinal in the ATP tournament in Umag where he held up for three hours to the Spanish Carlos Alcaraz, n.4 in the world, waiting for a player coming from the qualifiers (as well as the Russian Pavel Kotov, second seeded ).

Numbers in hand, the main favorite is the Spaniard Carlos Taberner, n.107 ATP (with best ranking of n.85 achieved in spring), specialist in this surface as indicated by the 5 Challenger titles won on red, in turn called to compete with the national Oriol Roca Batalla. In the same “spot” of the board – the quarter-final of the upper part – the Latvian Ernests Gulbis, former top ten, was drawn to the organizers, who was assigned the third wild card for the main draw (opposite to the 1st round to the American Nicolas Moreno De Alboran, semifinalist just today in the Challenger of Cordenons), and the Dutch Robin Haase, winner of the Internationals of San Marino in 2010, who will have as opponent the Finnish Otto Virtanen.

Spanish exam also for French Alexandre Muller, sixth-seeded and also protagonist in Cordenons, who will face Nikolas Sanchez Izquierdo.

As mentioned, we start on Sunday with the qualifications that see eight Italians on the field out of the 24 players at the start, with three from Romagna and one from San Marino. Cesenatico Francesco Forti (n.10), reduce from the final in the 25,000 ITF in Bolzano, face the Russian Yan Bondarevskiy, for the Rimini player on his debut Manuel Mazza (wildcard) there is the Argentine Matias Zukas, sixth seeded of the “which”, while the Ravenna Enrico Dalla Valle (wild card) immediately challenges the Ukrainian Georgii Kravchenko (# 8). The davisman of the Titan Marco De Rossi (jolly), on the other hand, was paired with the Romanian Stefan Palosi (# 11).

On the hunt for a place on the scoreboard too Riccardo Balzerani, Alexander Weis, Stefano Napolitano, Marco Miceli (jolly) and Luca Potenza.