The 21-year-old had suffered defeat on his previous two appearances at the ATP 250 event but ensured it would be third time lucky. The wild card, who reached the third round at the US Open<\/a> in August, will next meet Gabriel Diallo<\/a> after the Candian beat Jesper De Jong<\/a> 6-4, 7-6(7).<\/p>\n Shang Juncheng<\/a> moved past Francisco Comesana<\/a> 6-4, 6-4 to improve to 7-2 at the hard-court event, according to the Infosys ATP Win\/Loss Index. The Chinese wild card was in action for the first time since playing in Shanghai in October and will hope to put a difficult injury-hit 2025 behind him in the coming months.<\/p>\n The 20-year-old, who has reached a career-high No. 47 in the PIF ATP Rankings but is currently at No. 406, is a two-time semi-finalist in Hong Kong. Shang will play Lorenzo Sonego<\/a> in the second round.<\/p>\n Defending champion Alexandre Muller<\/a> maintained his impressive record in Hong Kong with a 7-5, 6-4 victory against Miomir Kecmanovic<\/a>. The Frenchman won his maiden ATP Tour title at the tournament in 2025 and will play Marcos Giron<\/a> in the second round. The American cruised past Laslo Djere<\/a> 6-2, 6-0.<\/p>\n Fifth seed Sonego and Argentine Tomas Martin Etcheverry<\/a> also advanced. Sonego beat #NextGenATP Japanese star Rei Sakamoto<\/a> 6-2, 7-6(4), while Etcheverry downed Valentin Royer<\/a> 6-4 7-5. Etcheverry will next face top seed and the No. 7 player in the PIF ATP Rankings Lorenzo Musetti<\/a>.<\/p>\n Botic van de Zandschulp<\/a> set a second-round clash with second seed Alexander Bublik<\/a>. The Dutchman beat Jan-Lennard Struff<\/a> 6-3, 1-6, 6-1 to level the pair’s Lexus ATP Head2Head series at 2-2.\n<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Match Report Wong makes Hong Kong history on home soil, Shang advances Defending champion Muller advances at ATP…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":391371,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-391370","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391370"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391370\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/391371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\u201cATP\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1767418027_359_atp-no-1-club-banner-article.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n