Alejandro Davidovich Fokina on Thursday battled back from a third-set deficit to beat Casper Ruud 7-6 (7/4), 4-6, 7-6 (7/4) and deny the third seed a place in the Canadian Open quarter-finals.
Ruud was two points away from victory at 5-3, 30-0 in Toronto before Davidovich Fokina served his way out of trouble.
Still leading 5-4, the Norwegian had a chance to seal the match, but was unable to do so, badly shanking a shot on break point to give new life to his opponent.
Photo: AFP
Both players held serve to send the contest to a tiebreak as the match crossed the three-hour mark.
Ruud dug himself into an early hole in the breaker with some tentative serving and poor forehands, and Davidovich Fokina claimed the win with a drop shot.
“When I broke at 5-4, that gave me like a shot of tequila,” the Spaniard said.
Up next for Davidovich Fokina is American Mackenzie McDonald, who reached his first quarter-final of a Masters 1000 tournament by dispatching Canadian Milos Raonic 6-3, 6-3.
After crushing 52 aces across his first two matches, hometown hero Raonic’s biggest weapon proved his undoing.
He managed just nine aces to go with six double faults, some coming at the worst possible times, including on set point in the opener and a break point in the second that put McDonald up 2-0.
Despite the loss, Raonic, a former world No. 3 who returned to the tour in June after a two-year absence due to injury, said that the tournament was a positive experience.
“A lot of things to look back and be proud of. Happy with how the week went overall” he said. “I wish I could have been better on court today, but you can’t discredit what two years away does, right?”
The others to reach the quarter-finals were Australia’s Alex de Minaur, Daniil Medvedev, Carlos Alcaraz of Spain, Tommy Paul of the US, Italy’s Jannik Sinner and Gael Monfils of France.
In the women’s singles, top-ranked Iga Swiatek of Poland beat 14th-seeded Karolina Muchova of the Czech Republic 6-1, 4-6, 6-4 in a match interrupted by rain for more than six hours.
Coming off her fourth victory of the year last week at home in Warsaw, Swiatek finished off Muchova after they were delayed for 3 hours, 20 minutes following the second set and for 2 hours, 50 minutes early in the third.
“You have to find energy even though we’ve been here since 9am,” Swiatek said in her on-court interview. “For sure, it was a pretty extraordinary day, and I don’t think I’ve had such a situation in my career so there is the opportunity to learn something new and see what I’m capable — even though we played this match like three times.”
With the victory, Swiatek guaranteed that she would remain No. 1 for the 72nd straight week when the new rankings are released on Monday.
Swiatek set up a quarter-final against Danielle Collins of the US, who beat hometown favorite Leylah Fernandez 6-3, 6-3.
US players Jessica Pegula and Coco Gauff are to face each other in one of the other quarter-finals, with the other two to be decided by matches played after press time last night.
Additional reporting by AP
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