Estonia's star player Mark Lajal noted the home support at the Kalev Sports Hall in Tallinn had been key.

"Especially here with this echo; the noise gets really loud. It helped a lot and especially in important moments brought along a bit of energy," Lajal said.

Now ranked 156th in the world, Lajal was drawn against Mexico's number two player Luis Carlos Alvarez (ATP 585th), beating him in two sets, 7:6 (5), 6:4.

Lajal said he had observed his opponent play in his home country, at the ATP tournament in Los Cabos in July, beating Australia's James McCabe, ranked in the top 200, and doing well against Aleksandar Kovacevic, ranked in the 50-60 range.

"I knew he is capable of playing very well. I definitely didn't think I'm playing against a guy ranked 500th and it would be an easy match, because it's known he can play. It turned out to be a good and quality match," Lajal said afterwards.

While the home support was loud, Mexico had its own smaller cadre of fans, with the entire team questioning practically every close line call with the umpire.

Alvarez put up a strong fight himself too. The hour-long opening set was even Stevens with no one breaking in regular games, pushing things to a tie-break situation, which the Estonian eventually prevailed in.

The second set started less well for Lajal, who fell behind 3:1, but he started pulling off ace after ace — of the seven he served up in the match with Alvarez, most of them came in set two, and won the last three games in a row to take set and match.

"At the start of the match I missed too many first serves, but later I found my serving rhythm better, got more in, and gained more advantages with the serve. By the end of the match it was already quite good. I don't know if it was the key, but it brought me success and gave me confidence," Lajal said afterwards.

Daniil Glinka, ranked 304th in the world and fresh from his recent success at the Cassis Open in France, where he reached the final, met Mexico's top player, Rodrigo Pacheco Mendez (ATP 211) in game two. Much of the crowd at the Kalev hall stuck around for this match too, which turned out to be equally raucously supported and with strong emotions on display from Mendez.

Glinka took the first set 6:3 but the Mexican player had found his stride by set two, winning it 6:2, and the decider 6:3, after Glinka had taken an initial lead, to take the match. The entire encounter took one hour and 45 minutes. Glinka went up 2:0 in the deciding set, but the Mexican then won six of the remaining seven games.

The doubles follows on Saturday from 1 p.m., with Lajal and 20-year-old Oliver Ojakäär facing Mendez and the unranked Daniel Moreno, with the winners taking the overall tie victory.

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