Christian Garin (100th ATP) will not play the main draw of the Masters 1000 in Rome this 2024. The northerner fell in the first round of the qualifiers this Monday, leaving him without a chance to play the fifth Masters 1000 of the season.
The defeat against the Kazakh Mikhail Kukushkin (134th) will leave the Chilean thinking, especially because of how the match played in the Italian capital took place. Gago served for the match in the second set and even had two match points that he couldn’t finish. First in the tiebreak of the second set and then when he was 6-5 and a return in the third set. Finally, and after more than three hours of play, the northerner fell 7-5, 6-7 and 6-7.
With this defeat and given that no ATP 250 or 500 will be played in the next two weeks, Garin will sign up for the Challenger 175 in Turin, one of the ones that distributes the most points in that category. The bet is not new, since when he dropped out of the qualifiers for the Rome Masters 1000 he also chose to play a minor tournament before being left without activity, in that case it was the Aix-en-Provence Challenger, which finally ended up being won by Alejandro Tabilo.
In 2023, Garin had reached the third round of the Rome Masters 1000, an instance in which he had to withdraw due to an injury that left him without Roland Garros last season. Now, by not being able to enter the main draw he will lose 45 units for the ATP ranking, dropping from 100 to 108 approximately. Although the fall hurts, the Chilean has the peace of mind that the cut for the French Open was already defined (he was an alternate seven) and that if the general plan of the clay tour is analyzed, he has already added more units than those achieved last year.
