Monfils among first-round winners in Marseille

Published May 02, 2016

Marseille, France (SportsNetwork.com) - Frenchman Gael Monfils headlined Tuesday's opening-round winners at the Open 13 tennis event.

The seventh-seeded Monfils won an extended tie-breaker in the second set of his match with Alexander Zverev to prevail by a 6-1, 7-6 (14-12) score on the indoor surface at Palais des Sports.

Tuesday's play also featured two all-French matchups, with Jeremy Chardy outlasting qualifier David Guez 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 and wild card Benoit Paire topping countrymate Paul-Henri Mathieu when the latter was forced to retire after dropping the first set 6-4.

Andrey Kuznetsov, Vasek Pospisil, Dominic Thiem and Jan-Lennard Struff also won their opening-round bouts.

This week's top seeds are Canadian slugger Milos Raonic and last week's Rotterdam titlist Stan Wawrinka of Switzerland.

Latvia's Ernests Gulbis beat then reigning champion Jo-Wilfried Tsonga of France in last year's Marseille finale.

The 2015 Marseille champ will collect $117,000.

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