Miami (USA) – After noting his first victory in the Masters 1000, Thiago Monteiro of Ceará had a very difficult match in front of him in Miami, this Saturday he faced the Canadian Felix Auger-Aliassime for the second round of the tournament and ended up succumbing. The Brazilian played well, but lost in the details, falling in two tie-breaks, with the final score of 7/6 (7-5) and 7/6 (10-8), in 2h43 of combat.

It was the third defeat in three duels between the two, being the first outside the Grand Slam. The Canadian also won in the first rounds of the US Open (2020) and Wimbledon (2021). In the next round, the Canadian will face Argentinian Francisco Cerundolo, last year’s semi-finalist, who beat lucky house loser Aleksandar Kovacevic with a 6/4 brace.

The match was very balanced and the two sets were defined in the tie-break. Although he managed to balance the disputes, without suffering a single break, Monteiro also had no chance of beating the serve of his Canadian rival. He finished the match with zero break points in his favor, having saved all five he faced.

In the first set, the only two break chances came in the tenth game, in which Thiago served under pressure at 4/5. The left-hander from Fortaleza saved the two set points he had against and took the tie-break decision, in which he started with a mini-break, but after the 3-3 he only managed to winning just two more points and saw Aliassime make it 7-5 to open 1-0 on the scoreboard.

The game continued to go point by point in the second half, with the servers winning. Aliassime was again unthreatened and only had three break points in his favour, losing two in the third game and one more in the fifth. Once again, the two had to face a tiebreaker and the Canadian once again did better, thus sealing their victory.

However, Cearense didn’t win their defeat easily and showed courage down the stretch, saving three match points on the tie-break, the second of them on the return. He also had a set point, but did not convert and the game ended in the hands of Aliassime, who found himself with 13 more winning points (32 to 19) and two unforced errors from less (23 to 25).