Like last season, the Montpellier tournament ended in the first round for Benjamin Bonzi. The Gardois, eliminated in 2022 by David Goffin, this time suffered the law in two dry sets (6-3, 6-4) from the Italian Lorenzo Sonego (56th), not far from being unplayable on Tuesday.
History repeats itself for Benjamin Bonzi. Like last year, the Gardois, now number 1 in France, will not see the 2nd round of the Montpellier tournament. The draw had reserved for the unfortunate of last weekend in the Davis Cup a formidable opponent, in the person of Lorenzo Sonego. On a big day, the young Italian is able to rise to the level of the best. Bonzi finds it much harder, even when playing his best tennis. And on Tuesday, the 42nd in the world released in 2022 by David Goffin was also very far from his best level, it is nothing to say. Sonego, lower ranked than the Frenchman in the ranking – he is 56th in the world – did not need to force much to take over our best representative of the moment, clearly dominated (6-3, 6-4) in both sets of this match. In Indian Wells, last season, it was the Frenchman who easily won, by the same score. Perhaps still marked by his stay in Hungary which had seen in particular the captain of the Blues Sébastien Grosjean prefer Adrian Mannarino to him for the second single after his new defeat in the competition (the fourth in five games), against the modest Piros, the player trained by Lionel Zimbler, broken from the start, constantly chased the score against a particularly inspired opponent who constantly gave the impression of wanting to shorten the exchanges on winning shots.
All is not black for Bonzi
The problem is that he very often succeeded, when the Frenchman never found how to slow down the Italian, especially since he was not really helped by his service on Tuesday, yet one of his most valuable assets when he suffers as against Sonego. The only good news for the recent finalist (for the first time in his career) in Pune (India): he will not lose a point in the standings since he had already left the entry tournament during the last edition. Other good news: Karen Khachanov’s withdrawal from Rotterdam will prevent Pablo Carreno Busta’s scorer in Melbourne from qualifying for the Dutch ATP500 tournament, where the French number 1, who declared after his defeat that he “would have to review the basics in training and apply them in matches”, will have the opportunity to see immediately whether his work for the week has paid off or not.
