In the first round of the men's singles of the 2024 ATP1000 Madrid Station that ended in the early morning of April 25, Beijing time, the 19-year-old Chinese rising star Shang Juncheng defeated France's Mutai 2-1 after four hours of hard fighting and advanced to the second round of men's singles. The scores in the 3 sets were 6 (9)-7, 6-2 and 7-6 (10).
In this competition, Shang Juncheng, ranked 114th in the world, won a wild card and directly entered the main competition. In the first round, he drew the world's No. 92 French star Moutte, and the two had never faced each other before.
In the first set, both sides held serve in the first 7 games. Mutai, who served first, led 4-3. Shang Juncheng forced two break points in the fifth game, but failed to break serve. In the 8th game, Shang Juncheng was the first to be broken and fell into an unfavorable situation of falling behind 3-5, but then Shang Juncheng quickly broke back in the 9th game, and it was difficult to hold serve in the 10th game. In these 2 games, Shang Juncheng saved 6 inventory points. After that, the game went to a tie-break. In the tie-break game, Shang Juncheng got the handicap point 3 times but failed to cash it out, and finally lost 9-11 and lost the first set.
In the second set, Shang Juncheng, who was not discouraged, broke the opening game and took a 3-0 lead. In the 8th game, in Mu Tai's non-guaranteed service game, Shang Juncheng broke again and pulled back a set with a score of 6-2.
In the deciding set, Shang Juncheng once again made a perfect start, and he was the first to break serve to establish a 3-0 advantage. But after that, Mu Tai chased 3 games, and then both sides failed to break, and the game entered the tie-break again, and in the tie-break, after the two sides fought fiercely to 10 draws, Shang Juncheng finally won 12-10 and won the fierce battle that took nearly 4 hours.
After winning this battle, Shang Juncheng gained 30 points and immediately reached a new high of 103, and is about to enter the top 100 in the men's singles world. In the next round, Shang Juncheng will face the tournament's No. 27 seed, local star Fokina Davidovic.