Tennis high-flyer Carlos Alcaraz suffered a surprising defeat in the round of 16 of the Shanghai Masters. The 20-year-old Spaniard lost to Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov after a tough fight 7:5, 2:6, 4:6. The bankruptcy also increases the pressure on Germany’s number one Alexander Zverev.
In the 64th match in 2023, Carlos Alcaraz suffered just his ninth defeat on Wednesday. Striking: Only one Alcaraz conqueror was placed worse in the world rankings at the time of the victory against the high-flyer than Dimitrov, who is currently ranked 19th in the ATP rankings: The Hungarian Fabian Maroszan sensationally beat Alcaraz in the 3rd round of the Masters in Rome . Maroszan was ranked just 135th at the time.
Dimitrov laid the foundation for his victory with extremely strong service and enormous nerves on the important points. The Bulgarian was able to fend off three of five break opportunities and used four of five – a simply outstanding rate against an absolute top player. A look at the total points shows how close the match was: Dimitrov recorded a total of 84 points, just four more than his counterpart.
From a German tennis perspective, the success is also quite explosive: In the quarterfinals, Dimitrov will now face the Chilean Nicolas Jarry (22nd in the world rankings). Both the 32-year-old Dimitrov and the South American would significantly shorten the gap to Zverev with another victory in the ATP Race.
Tennis stars fight for the World Cup crown in Turin
The ATP Race is limited exclusively to the results of the current tennis year; the best eight players fight for the unofficial World Cup crown at the end of the year. Zverev, who failed early in Shanghai, is in seventh place with 3,415 points, the gap to Dimitrov (1,790) and Jarry (1,720) was quite comfortable, but could now slip well below the 1,000 point mark.
But that’s not all: Hubert Hurkacz from Poland moved within 700 points of the Hamburger. And the US boy Ben Shelton could also significantly improve his starting position. Especially since the field of those remaining in Shanghai is extremely open after Alcaraz’s departure. The American Tommy Paul could have even overtaken Zverev with a tournament win, but failed on Wednesday afternoon because of Zverev’s friend Andrey Rublev.
There are still eight tournaments on the schedule before the Tennis World Cup in Turin, but there are already signs of an extremely tight race behind the top 4 (Novak Djokovic, Alcaraz, Daniil Medvedev and Jannik Sinner). Zverev should avoid another very early bankruptcy in this one.
2023-10-11 15:21:00
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