Cincinnati (AFP) – Brandon Nakashima continued his red-hot pace on Friday, knocking out sixth-seeded Taylor Fritz 7-6 (11/9), 4-6, 6-3 to reach the ATP-WTA Cincinnati Masters semi-finals. Nakashima began his post-Wimbledon hard court run with a Washington semi-final, which he lost to Fritz, a run to the final in the Montreal Masters, and now his best showing at Cincinnati—all with the US Open start barely more than a week away.
Nakashima withstood 22 aces from Fritz, who also bashed 31 unforced errors. Nakashima trailed a break in the third set but broke back to knot it at 3-3 and broke again for a 5-3 lead. He out-hit the powerful Fritz and converted on his first match point with a forehand winner. “I’ve gotten a lot of confidence over the summer,” Nakashima said. “In the final set I trusted my game, I’m proud with how I ended the match. Today I was trying to hit bigger against him than in Washington, that’s what got me through. I’ve had a pretty good last few weeks, I’ve spent hours and hours on the court – I’m proud of myself,” he added. “I now have the opportunity to win more matches.”
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Nakashima will face Frances Tiafoe in another all-American clash after Tiafoe out-lasted Italian Lorenzo Musetti 7-6 (7/2) 7-5 in a match in which the first set lasted more than an hour. It took Tiafoe four match points to finally move through, sending over a service winner that Musetti could not handle. The match was played at a slow but intense pace, with multiple games lasting four to six minutes. “He’s a hell of a player, he makes you beat him – and that’s what I did,” said Tiafoe, who was broken the first time he served for the match but won the next two games. “Each match is its own story. I just go out and compete as hard as I can.”
In the women’s quarter-finals, Sara Bejlek backed up her stunning victory over top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka, rallying for a 3-6, 6-4, 7-6 (7/5) victory over Madison Keys. The 20-year-old Czech got off to a slow start against the big-hitting American, a former Australian Open champion and the 2019 winner in Cincinnati. Bejlek trailed 0-3 on the way to dropping the first set but rode a wave of momentum shifts into the final four where she’ll face either fourth-seeded Coco Gauff or Marta Kostyuk.
Bejlek broke first in the third set only for Keys to battle back and force the tiebreaker, in which Bejlek rallied from 4-2 down on the way to a victory capped by a stinging winner down the line on match point. “I just kept believing in the match no matter what,” said Bejlek, who won her first WTA title in Abu Dhabi in February as a qualifier. “I believed much more than ever, it was always in my head.”
After a solid first set, the 24th-ranked Keys broke in the third game of the second, but Bejlek, ranked 35th, broke back in the sixth and held for a 4-3 lead. Keys answered with a love game, but Bejlek turned the tables two games later to force the third set. “I was trying to cool down in the second set, I was pretty nervous so I didn’t want to think about what was going on,” Bejlek said.
© 2024 AFP
