Gijón P2: Juan Tello gets the better of Paquito Navarro in stunning comeback

Juan Tello has beaten his former partner, Paquito Navarro, in a gruelling Round of 32 tie, marking a stunning comeback despite losing the first set.

Paquito Navarro and Fran Guerrero will know the feeling intimately after Wednesday's Round of 32 at the Gijón P2, where a match they seemed to have firmly in hand unravelled in the most instructive way possible.

Edu Alonso and Juan Tello survive. And the manner of their survival says something important about their chances this season.

What happened in this match?

The most interesting thing about this match wasn't the result. It was the question Navarro and Guerrero posed in the first set, and how long it took Alonso and Tello to find an answer.

The question was simple: what do you do when one of the best tactical minds on the Premier Padel Tour decides your partner doesn't exist?

Paquito Navarro has been around long enough to know that Juan Tello is a big threat.

The Argentine is one of the most naturally aggressive players in the game — a left-side player who, given space and the right ball, can dismantle a point in a single stroke. So Navarro's solution, drilled into Guerrero from the first point, was to make sure Tello never got that ball.

Tello's isolation and Alonso's resilience

Every serve, every smash, every reset went to Alonso. And if a ball ever drifted towards Tello, it was because Navarro and Guerrero had made an error, not a decision.

It worked. Brilliantly, for a set and a half.

In the first set, Navarro and Guerrero converted 69% of their serve points. That's a pair who know exactly where they're serving and why, and who are winning the points that follow because the return is coming back to exactly the player they want it to come back to.

Alonso and Tello, under constant pressure, managed just 37% of return points won. The 6-4 first set flattered Alonso and Tello, if anything.

Guerrero showing maturity

What made it particularly impressive was Guerrero's role in sustaining it. You might expect the experienced Navarro to be the organising intelligence here — and he was — but the 22-year-old from Málaga was the one executing the plan under pressure, point after point, without deviation.

That takes a specific kind of discipline that most players his age simply don't have. Guerrero left his long-term partner Javi Leal to take Navarro's call this season, and that decision is starting to make a lot of sense. Their Riyadh P1 semi-final run in February was no fluke. This, even in defeat, wasn't either.

But here's the thing about targeting one player relentlessly for an entire match: eventually, they adapt. Or more precisely — eventually, they stop making the mistakes the tactic is designed to exploit.

Alonso's consistency forced a tactical reset for Navarro & Guerrero

By the second set, Alonso had adjusted. Not dramatically, not with any sudden tactical revelation, but incrementally — finding better angles, taking pace off when he needed to, refusing to be hurried into the unforced errors that had gifted Navarro and Guerrero so many easy points in the first.

Alonso and Tello's serve points won climbed to 73% in the second set. Guerrero and Navarro dropped to 64%. The dynamic had shifted.

And when Alonso started holding his own, Tello finally got involved.

Enter Juan Tello

Tello spent the majority of the first set visibly furious — and he was right to be. Being frozen out of a match you're physically present for is one of the more psychologically challenging things that can happen to an elite sportsman.

The temptation is to force your way in, to reach for balls that aren't yours, to manufacture involvement. Tello, to his credit, largely resisted that temptation, trusted his partner, and waited.

When the match finally let him breathe, his quality was immediate.

A game of fine margins

A matchup of this calibre in the Round of 32 is rare. As soon as both teams saw the draw, the response was likely one of disbelief, knowing this game could go either way.

And in a sense, that's exactly what happened. This Gijón P2 Round of 32 game felt more like two very good football teams facing off in a penalty shootout.

Nothing resembled this more than the third set, which was tight throughout — 50% of total points each, serve percentages within touching distance of one another, a set that statistically could have gone either way.

But Alonso and Tello won 29% of second serve return points in the decider against Navarro and Guerrero's 20%. In a set decided by the smallest of margins, that's where the match was won. Second serve return points are where the pressure really lives — the server has already missed once, and the returner knows it. Alonso and Tello made those moments count. Navarro and Guerrero didn't.

Two titans collide, but none will fall

There's something worth saying here about the broader shape of this match-up. Navarro versus Tello is, in a sense, a clash between two different generations of tactical sophistication.

Navarro is old-school in the best possible way — a player whose game is built on reading opponents, constructing points, imposing structure.

Tello is the modern explosive threat, capable of ending a point before the structure has even been built.

The fact that Navarro's answer to Tello was to simply pretend he wasn't there, and that it nearly worked, tells you everything about how good that plan was. The fact that it ultimately didn't tells you everything about how good Tello and Alonso are.

What next for both pairs?

Navarro and Guerrero will go again. They're too good, and too well-organised, for this to define their season. But they'll know they had this one. The first set statistics say so.

Had they stuck to their game plan of pressuring Alonso into more mistakes, instead of involving Tello more in the second and third, it could've been a different outcome.

Next up for Tello and Alonso is a much easier R16 tie against Martinez and Valenzuela. Whilst it won't be a walk in the park by any stretch, there would have been relief from the camp to not be up against a pairing of Navarro and Guerrero's quality again this early in the competition.

Navarro and Guerrero will reset now, hopefully taking some positives from their first two tournaments of the season. The Cancún P2 (16-22 March) is their next opportunity to right the wrongs of this incredibly tough draw.

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