Sebastian Korda won his first ATP trophy with a straight-sets victory over Italian wild card Marco Cecchinato at the Emilia-Romagna Open on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Korda became the first American in 11 years to lift a trophy on European clay, since Sam Querrey won in Belgrade in 2010.<\/p>\n
Korda had not dropped a set all week in Parma and he carried on that run in the final to see off the 104th-ranked Cecchinato 6-2 6-4 in 75 minutes.<\/p>\n
The 20-year-old Korda had lost the only other final he had contested, against Hubert Hurkacz at the Delray Beach Open in January.<\/p>\n
"This is something that I've dreamed of," said Korda, who is ranked 63rd. "I really thought I was going to get it done in Delray Beach, and I was a little heartbroken.<\/p>\n
"But I stayed positive, even with such a bad first part of the clay-court season. I took a couple of days off, recharged my batteries, and had a really good practice week in Prague with my dad and my coach. I came back hungrier, and I'm playing some really good tennis now."<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Korda's father is former second-ranked Petr Korda, the 1998 Australian Open winner. They are the third father-son duo to win tour-level singles titles in the Open Era, following in the footsteps of Ramanathan Krishnan and Ramesh Krishnan, and Phil Dent and Taylor Dent.<\/p>\n
Korda had never even won back-to-back main draw matches on clay before arriving in Parma.<\/p>\n
But he had stormed through to the final and held his nerve despite being faced with a partisan home crowd.<\/p>\n
Korda won 82 per cent of points on his first serve and broke three times, including the decisive break at 5-4 on Cecchinato's serve to clinch the title.<\/p>\n
He also staved off the one break point he faced, late in the second set.<\/p>\n
"Today I played a really tough opponent and the crowd wasn't easy," Korda said. "They kept cheering him on, but I'm really proud of myself and how I handled it."<\/p>\n
For a daily dose of the best of the breaking news and exclusive content from Wide World of Sports, subscribe to our newsletter by<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0clicking here!<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sebastian Korda won his first ATP trophy with a straight-sets victory over Italian wild card Marco Cecchinato at the Emilia-Romagna Open on Saturday. Korda became […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77887"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=77887"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77887\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77889,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77887\/revisions\/77889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=77887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=77887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=77887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}