Life is about to get more difficult for Frances Tiafoe at the Miami Open.
Tiafoe, a 19-year-old from Maryland, set up a second-round meeting against 18-time Grand Slam champion Roger Federer at the hard-court tournament by beating Konstantin Kravchuk 7-5 5-7 6-1 on Thursday.
Tiafoe hit 12 aces and accumulated 14 break points, converting five, on the 32-year-old Kravchuk's serve. This was Tiafoe's third career-match victory at a Grand Slam or Masters event.
Tiafoe is ranked 101st, Kravchuk 103rd. The level of competition will rise against the fourth-seeded - and former No. 1-ranked - Federer.
In other men's first-round action, Horacio Zeballos came back to beat Gastao Elias 6-7 (7-2) 6-2 7-5 and earn a match-up against top-seeded Stan Wawrinka while Damir Dzumhur beat Chung Hyeon to set up a meeting with Australian 12th-seed Nick Kyrgios.
Elsewhere, Adrian Mannarino defeated qualifier Benjamin Becker 7-6 (8-6) 6-3 and will next face No. 32 Paolo Lorenzi, Borna Coric edged Marcel Granollers 7-6 (8-6) 4-6 6-3 and Tommy Robredo defeated Nikoloz Basilashvili 3-6 6-4 6-2.
Other first-round winners were Italy's Andreas Seppi, Dutchman Robin Haase, Kazakhstan's Mikhail Kukushkin, Diego Schwartzman of Argentina, Russian duo Andrey Kuznetsov and Andrey Rublev, Darian King of Barbados and Taiwan's Yen-Hsun Lu.
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