Cincinnati (AFP)
The journey of the Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz, ranked second and runner-up, ended in the second round of the Cincinnati Masters 1000 tournament, after losing to the Frenchman Gael Monfils 6-4, 6-7, 4-6.
The match was resumed on Thursday due to rain, which disrupted it in the tiebreak of the second set when Monfils was leading 3-1.
The 37-year-old Frenchman quickly won the tiebreak on Friday, then made the difference at the start of the third set, when he broke Alcaraz’s serve in the third game, to lead 2-1, on his way to winning it 6-4 in 58 minutes, and the match in two hours and 27 minutes.
The Spaniard’s exit, which was exempted from the first round, comes immediately after his loss in the men’s singles final at the Paris Olympics to Serbian Novak Djokovic, who decided not to defend his title in Cincinnati.
After achieving his first victory in his third encounter with the 21-year-old Spaniard, Monfils will meet the Dane Holger Rune in the third round.
World number one Jannik Sinner booked his place in the quarter-finals without playing, due to the withdrawal of his Australian opponent Jordan Thompson.
The Australian Open champion will face sixth seed Andrey Rublev in his sixth Masters quarter-final out of six appearances, after the Russian beat Japanese Brandon Nakashima 7-6, 6-1 in one hour and 21 minutes.
The two players will face each other for the ninth time, and the Italian has the advantage with five wins, but he lost the last match against the Russian, which was in the quarter-finals of the Montreal Masters 1000 tournament in three sets, 3-6, 6-1, and 2-6.
German Alexander Zverev, the third seed and 2021 champion, also qualified for the quarter-finals, after defeating Spaniard Pablo Carreno Busta 7-5 and 7-6.
In the women’s 1000 tournament, Polish Iga Swiatek, ranked first in the world, reached the quarter-finals, with an easy win over Ukrainian Marta Kostyuk 6-2, 6-2.
Swiatek, who has won four titles in the 1000 tournaments this season, needed an hour and 10 minutes to book her place in the quarter-finals of this tournament, where she reached the semi-finals last season, her best result in five participations.
The Polish player confirmed her superiority over Kostyuk, who lost to her rival at the 2021 Roland Garros Championship and the semi-finals of the Indian Wells 1000 tournament in March, achieving her 54th win since the start of the season against 6 losses.
Because of the rain that fell throughout the morning, Swiatek entered the match without having done the usual pre-match training. She said, “There was some wind and the conditions were difficult. I tried to focus on the easy things. It wasn’t easy to win without warming up, but I’m happy that I was able to play the match and play great tennis.”
Swiatek will face fifth-seeded Italian Jazmine Paolini or Russian Mira Andreeva in her ninth quarter-final of 2024.
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