Alex Klintcharov has found that playing someone whose ranking is only half of his is just a bridge too far, although he put up a pretty good fight against Ly Hoang Nam. The Vietnamese number one has a career-high ranking of 231, and even his current level of 538 is way above Klintcharov’s 1111. Nam broke to love in the fourth game, but Klintcharov had two break-back points in the seventh game before converting one when Nam was serving for the set. He held to love in the next game to level the scores, but Nam held to love as well before breaking Klintcharov’s serve again, again to love, to wrap up the set after 48 minutes.
Nam broke even earlier in the second set, winning the first three games, but Klintcharov broke back in the seventh game and had another break point in the ninth. He then had to hold serve to stay in the match, but managed only one point as Nam closed out the match after an hour and 37 minutes. The final score was 7-5, 6-4.