Félix Auger-Aliassime’s game comes back to life

Quebecer Félix Auger-Aliassime was much more convincing than in his previous match, Wednesday, in the second round of the Cincinnati tennis tournament, where he defeated Australian Alex de Minaur 6-3, 6-2.

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Having obtained a pass for this stage of the competition, the seventh seed took 1 h 18 min to have the 20th racket on the ATP circuit.

Hardly beaten 6-1 and 6-2 by the Norwegian Casper Ruud in the quarter of the National Bank Open on Friday, “FAA” capitalized on a few unforced errors from his opponent, who also missed a break point in the last game of the first set.

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In particular, the maple leaf player took the opposing serve on shots that were too deep in the first and third games of the second set. After conceding the break when he had a 4-1 lead, he replied in the same way to give himself the chance to serve for the victory, an opportunity he did not miss.

The winner outshot 9-3 in years and pocketed 82% of the points contested on his opening serve. For his part, de Minaur had the upper hand in 56% of points played when he held first serves.

In the next round, Auger-Aliassime will face the Italian Jannik Sinner, who defeated the Serbian Miomir Kecmanovic by default.

Big order for Shapovalov

Later, Denis Shapovalov (21st) put behind him a complicated first part of the match to overcome the American Tommy Paul (31st) in three sets of 3-6, 6-4 and 6-3.

After losing the first set, the Maple Leaf representative suffered two straight breaks in the second set, so Paul was two games away from victory. Never mind, Shapovalov won the next five games to force an extra set.

If he got into trouble with 10 double faults and a low rally rate of 35% with his second serve in this match, Shapovalov compensated by converting five of his 10 break points.

“Shapo” will now have the heavy task of facing the Russian Daniil Medvedev, the world’s number one racket. If he won the first two duels between the two men, the Canadian lost the last two.

Paul, for his part, had captured the attention at the National Bank Open, reaching the quarter-finals in Montreal with victories over Vasek Pospisil, Carlos Alcaraz and Marin Cilic before losing to Daniel Evans.