The first half of the opening set was pretty even when Matt Donald played Aleksei Mokrov in their first round singles match in Monastir, but the Czech teenager applied the pressure after that and didn’t lose another game in the set, serving it out after 40 minutes.
Mokrov fought back to break Donald’s serve in the first game of the second set, but he had to save break points after the first two deuces in the sixth game before going on to hold serve. It wasn’t until Mokrov was serving for the set that Donald was able to break back, and he had a set point when Mokrov served the final game before the tie-break.
Donald held serve to start, and got an immediate mini-break when Mokrov lost his first point. That was cancelled out as soon as Donald served again, and points from there went with serve until Mokrov double faulted for the fifth time in the set. That gave Donald two match points, and he converted the second when the ball came back to his side of the net to serve. The final score was 6-2, 7-6 (5), and the match took two hours and 13 minutes.