Cabal And Farah Gain Confidence At Wimbledon | ATP Tours

Colombians Juan Sebastian Cabal and Robert Farah enjoyed a big win at Wimbledon on Sunday to reach the quarterfinals in the grass-court major for the third consecutive time.

The sixth seeds, who lifted the trophy at SW19 in 2019, broke Radu Albot and Nikoloz Basilashvili four times to seal a 6-1, 6-4, 6-4 third-round win. Cabal and Farah’s opponents in the London quarterfinals will be the 13th-seeded Mexican Santiago Gonzalez and Argentine Andres Molteni or the American duo of Denis Kudla and Jack Sock.

Things were not so easy for Nikola Mektic and Mate Pavic. The second seeds managed to keep their 2021 title defense alive, but not without a scare along the way.

The Croatian team regained their composure in a decisive fifth set to see off Lloyd Glasspool and Harri Heliovaara with a 6-4, 7-6(6), 4-6, 2-6, 6-3 third-round victory. Mektic and Pavic looked to be galloping into the quarter-finals when they led Glasspool and Heliovaara by two sets to love on Court 12, but an inspired comeback from the British-Finnish pairing turned a comfortable afternoon for the second seeds into an epic of three hours and 14 minutes.

Mektic and Pavic, 13-time tour champions, chasing their third successive grass-court crown after triumphs at The Queen’s Club and Eastbourne, converted 15 break point opportunities in the match but converted just three. Crucially, however, two of them came in the fifth set, when they broke their opponents’ serve in the fourth and eighth games to secure a place in the quarter-finals.

Top seeds Rajeev Ram and Joe Salisbury also had their work cut out for them after dropping the first set to winners in Mallorca, Brazil’s Rafael Matos and Spain’s David Vega Hernandez.

Ram and Salisbury sit at No. 2 and No. 1 in the Pepperstone ATP Doubles Rankings, respectively, but the pair have yet to win a tour-level grass-court title. This Sunday they took another step forward with their 4-6, 6-4, 6-3, 6-4 win against 16-seeded Matos and Vega Hernandez.

Waiting for Ram and Salisbury in the quarterfinals will be France’s Nicolas Mahut and Edouard Roger-Vasselin.