Ofner celebrates maiden ATP Masters 1000 win in thrilling tiebreak in Shanghai

After reaching his second ATP semifinal last week at the ATP 250 in Astana, Sebastian Offner’s strong form continued at the Rolex Shanghai Masters. The ÖTV player achieved his first success in an ATP Masters 1000 event in a thrilling tiebreaker in the Chinese city on Thursday. Styria (ATP 49) defeated Peruvian Juan Pablo Varelas Patino-Samudio (ATP 65) 7:6 (3), 7:6 (6), after approximately 2:06 hours of play. Offner can now look forward to the first confrontation on Saturday with American Tommy Paul, who is ranked twelfth in the rankings as well as in the world. With 25 ATP points, he is already 46th in the live world rankings. Another win would bring him another 20 points and improve to 42nd place. It was previously announced that he will be in the Erste Bank Open in 2017 and will receive a wild card in Vienna for the main draw.

With his successes in Astana, Ofner has broken into the world’s top 50 for the first time at No. 49. In Shanghai, he is playing in only the second ATP Masters 1000 tournament in his career, after the tournament in Madrid last May, where he was eliminated in the second round. And the last of the qualifiers. On his second attempt, he achieved his first victory at this level in a major field. When the score was 4:5 in the first set, he was able to fend off the set point with strong nerves. In the second round, the pupil of Wolfgang Thieme’s ATC Academy, supervised on site by Stefan Rittel, had to win after the break with a score of 5:3, which was followed by the break to 5:4, or prevail with a 6:1 lead in the tie-break trembling again. Offner then had a fifth match point which he was able to use this time. In this way, he also managed to avenge Varelas Patino-Samudio’s defeat in the only encounter between the two so far at the French Open in Paris 2021, where he lost in the first qualifying round 7:6 (10), 5:7, 3:6 was.

On Friday (from 6:30am CEST) Alexander Erler and Lucas Midler will make their debut in Shanghai. The ÖTV Davis Cup double meets French singles winner Ugo Humbert and Astana’s Adrian Mannarino in the first round.