The Argentine Davis Cup team drew 1-1 with their South Korean counterparts following the first day of action in the series being held in Busan, which is part of the first round of the qualifying phase. In the first match of the series, Argentine Thiago Tirante defeated South Korean Hyeon Chung 2-6, 7-5 and 7-6(5) in a grueling encounter that lasted 2 hours and 53 minutes. The match started in the worst possible way for Tirante, who had a very weak first set and suffered against the experience of the South Korean, who was once one of the biggest promises on the circuit and even reached the semifinals of the 2018 Australian Open, although a string of injuries halted his progress and today has him outside the top 300. In the second set, Tirante showed pride by winning 7-5 in a very complicated set in which he was twice break down. Finally, the third and decisive set was the most even of all and had to be decided in a tie-break after both players held all their service games. It was there that Tirante had a better touch to end up winning 7-5 and thus giving Argentina the first point of the series with great suffering. Next was Marco Trungelliti's turn, who had a poor performance and could not overcome Soon-Woo Kwon, who defeated him 7-6(6) and 6-2 after a little over an hour and a half of play. Trungelliti, at 36 years old, became the oldest player to debut for the Argentine Davis Cup team, had a good start and got to 3-1 on his serve. However, he wasted that opportunity and the South Korean took the first set after a tight tie-break in which he won 8-6. Already in the second set, Kwon took advantage of the blow that Trungelliti suffered and thanks to two breaks in the sixth and eighth games, he sealed the victory that allowed him to level the series after the first day of play. According to what the Argentine News Agency learned, the series will continue this Sunday with the doubles, which will start at one in the morning and will initially feature Federico Gómez and Guido Andreozzi for Argentina and Uising Park and Jisung Nam for the South Koreans. Then the other two singles matches will be played.
