Holger Rune is ready for the second round of the French Open, but he had to make a spirited comeback after a difficult start against Spain's Roberto Bautista Agut in Paris.
After a fairly hard test Rune won 6-7, 6-4, 6-3, 6-2 over the world number 49.
It was a bit of a messy performance, but Rune in the end had too much class for the experienced Spaniard.
After a prolonged period of time marked by illness and few matches, Rune declared himself not too optimistic before the start of the tournament and that showed in the beginning of the encounter.
Rune did manage to build a 2-0 lead, but then he quickly lost his grip.
In the French wind, he mistimed several balls, and he showed the first signs of frustration, when he was broken to 3-3 and hammered the ball into the back wall.
In the following games, Rune was seen communicating a lot with his coach Lars Christensen, and he confronted the referee, when he was irritated by some spectators.
Bautista Agut, at 37 years old, has seen better days, and it has been a handful of years since he peaked at ninth place in the world rankings. But the Spaniard is still a cunning opponent, and he took advantage of Rune's bad mood.
At 5-4, Bautista Agut had four set points, but Rune managed to save them all and bring the set to a tiebreak which Bautista Agut won 7-4.
In the second set, Rune acted much more cleverly and tried to find new solutions to dismantling the Spaniards solid baseline play. This gave Rune the upper hand but he was made to fight hard to get the decisive break of serve. .
Rune carried the momentum into the third set, where he produced a host of winners to go ahead 3-0 and later win the set.
The Dane gave away almost nothing on his own serve and dominated Bautista Agut with with powerful strokes from his fore- and backhand.
Rune never surrendered his control of the match again in the final set and is now set to meet the American Emilio Nava in the second round of the tournament.