April Recap: San Remo — Marrakesh — Oieras — Rome

“April does what he wants” is a widespread German saying. This year you can also apply the saying to my tennis month of April. Lots of new experiences, changes in weather, defeats, travel.

After the title in Biel, Constantin and I took the train straight to San Remo. A small town on the Ligurian coast, and the first clay court tournament of the year. After the successful indoor season there was a small setback in San Remo. We started the tournament optimally, but unfortunately lost 8-10 in the match tiebreak against Cacic/Demoliner.

The following week I got into the ATP tournament in Marrakech together with Petros Tsitsipas at the last second. There we also lost a close match against the strong-serving pairing Cressy/Olivetti. After a week of training in Stuttgart, we hit the 125 Challenger in Lisbon. After a good first round, we lost again 8-10 against Demoliner/Vavassori (winners of the ATP tournament in Marrakesh).

In the last week of the tournament in April we went to the Eternal City of Rome. We traveled directly from Lisbon and I was able to experience the impressive atmosphere in Rome for the second time. A bit of culture and many hard training sessions later, we had the first round match against Barrientos (ATP 65)/Cabral (ATP 55), unfortunately we were narrowly defeated here too with 46 76 7-10, the two later won the tournament Rome.

The performances and level of play in April were very high, unfortunately this could not be converted into many countable points. The level of our opponents was also very high, and a bit better in the last few matches, you can recognize that.

Despite the narrow defeats, Constantin and I were able to gain important insights. Insights that will help us be successful this summer. After a lot of long travels this month, I'm now looking forward to a few tournaments in the region and a few league matches in Luxembourg. April ends, and as we always used to say at the youth tournaments:

It's going to be a hot summer of tennis!