April 25, 2013 | By Long Island Tennis Magazine Staff
At the 2013 Barcelona Open Banc Sabadell on Thursday, three matches were completed before the rain set in and fourth seed Nicolas Almagro set a quarterfinal clash with Juan Monaco after he won an all-Spanish contest with Marcel Granollers, 6-3, 6-4. Almagro leads his head to head series with Monaco 4-3, but has lost his past two meetings with the Argentine. Almagro has a 13-5 record on clay this season, finishing runner-up in Houston and reaching the semifinals in Acapulco and Buenos Aires.
Monaco was a 6-0, 7-6(11) winner over 10th-seeded Jeremy Chardy. Monaco reached the Houston semifinals before losing to American John Isner and took eventual champion Novak Djokovic to three sets in the third round of last week’s Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters.
Dmitry Tursunov was a loser to Brazil’s Thomaz Bellucci 4-6, 6-1, 6-3 in just under two hours. The 16th-seeded Bellucci is through to his first ATP World Tour quarterfinal since finishing runner-up in Moscow in October 2012.
