Alejandro Tabilo lives a bitter day at the Chile Open and says goodbye to the clay-court tour empty-handed

After a difficult start to the season, Alejandro Tabilo sought to raise the bar at the Chile Open , on the same central court of San Carlos de Apoquindo, where he played a great match against Rafael Nadal at the end of November last year. And, precisely, his rival was a product of the Manacorí academy: the Spaniard Jaume Munar (66th), winner 6-0, 6-7 (4) and 7-6 (5), in two hours and 42 minutes of play.

The left-hander’s moment is complex and very different from the one he experienced exactly a year ago, when he reached the ATP 250 final in Córdoba and was a semi-finalist in Santiago, points that have already been erased from the ranking and this Today, they confine him to 186th place, far from the 64th place he occupied in mid-2022. For this reason, defeat hits hard.

The beginnings were not easy for the man born in Toronto. Too many unforced errors made it much easier for their opponent, who quickly took the lead with a break in the first game. Then he repeated the task with another break in the third game. At the time, Tabilo looked very subdued, with plenty of unforced errors and fairly predictable tennis for the Hispanic, who earned a third consecutive break and then closed the set with his serve.

The nearly 2,000 people who arrived at the Las Condes site tried to boost local credit with cries of support, while trying to shake off that drowsiness. At least he won the first game of the second set to nil, adding a bit more softness to the board. The national tennis player needed to quickly regain the sensations that had led him to triumph last year, but the Spaniard has not weakened in his regularity either. To make matters worse, the court played several tricks on Guillermo Gómez’s pupil.

Every time Tabilo accelerated, he complicated Munar. And this is how he managed his first break of the match, at the level of flatter and deeper shots. However, a series of unforced errors, especially with the backhand, allowed the Spaniard to recover his serve immediately.

The history of the second set defined in the decisive game, where the place started very well. A mini-break at the start excited the public, Munar no longer seemed so calm and also suffered from bad rebounds, while the Chilean chained several winning shots to win everything in the tiebreaker. Besides, people were more and more participative and that also made the Europeans quite uncomfortable who complained about the situation.

It looked like the latest chapter found the Chilean with more confidence. He even went 0-30 in the first game, but again that lack of consistency hit him hard. The Spaniard saved his serve and in the next shot, to go up 3-0.

But Tabilo was still ready to fight and managed to win the break back. Again with good reverse rights, he got back into the game. The Spaniard put himself under pressure and made several unforced errors with his right, which allowed him to break in the seventh game. However, Ale again couldn’t hold the advantage, which is already starting to be a worrying trend. Thus, everything was defined in the tiebreaker, where the Hispanic did things better and the Chilean didn’t make good decisions.

The defeat weighs heavily on Alejandro Tabilo, who leaves empty-handed the South American tour on clay and with the serious threat of leaving the top 200 if he does not defend the 50 points he obtained last year in the Santiago Challenger. The challenge will be to concentrate quickly and regain the level that led him to make a significant leap on the circuit in order to get out of his first major crisis.