Generali Open

Sebastian Ofner against Lukas Neumayer – LIVE today

Lukas Neumayer(Bild: Christof Birbaumer)

Sebastian Ofner's dress rehearsal for the Olympics at his home tournament in Kitzbühel was a failure. The number 5 seed from Styria lost the Austrian duel with 21-year-old Lukas Neumayer from Salzburg 4:6, 6:4, 6:7(3) on Tuesday.

Ofner, who has been suffering from heel problems of late, did not appear to be in full possession of his strength.

Lukas Neumayer(Bild: Christof Birbaumer)

For Neumayer, protégé of Günter Bresnik and Gerald Kamitz, it was his first win on the tour in his second ATP Tour appearance (after Kitz 2021). The Salzburg native will now face wildcarded American Nicolas Moreno De Alboran in the round of 16.

Sebastian Ofner(Bild: Christof Birbaumer)

In front of a sold-out crowd of 5800 fans, the first set was evenly poised until the seventh game, which Ofner, who had served very confidently until then, had to concede. Ofner missed two opportunities to break back immediately at 15:40 on Neumayer's serve and fell 3:5 behind. Neumayer then served out confidently to 6:4 after 35 minutes.

Lukas Neumayer(Bild: Christof Birbaumer)

Ofner fights his way back
Ofner had to surrender his serve in the opening game of the second set and fell behind 0:2, but with a rebreak to nil at 2:2 and another service loss by Neumayer to make it 4:2 for Ofner, the course seemed to be set to equalize the set. But Ofner started to make more mistakes from the baseline again and immediately gave up his own serve. Neumayer, who is 289th in the ATP rankings, well behind Ofner (56th), equalized at 4:4. However, Ofner saved himself with a break to make it 6:4 in the third set.

Read the match statistics here:

The match continued to go back and forth, with both sides making mistakes. After a break and a re-break, the score was 3:3 before Ofner once again managed to break back immediately after losing a service. Austria's number one fended off two break points at 5:5 and after 2:07 hours the match went into a tiebreak. This was somewhat unfortunate for Ofner, Neumayer used his first match point at 6:3 to achieve his biggest success to date.