Taylor Fritz has had a terrific year, finishing the year as the ATP Star of Tomorrow Award winner. In Columbus he has the chance to end the year as he started it, by winning a Challenger event.
Fritz had started the year with victory over Dudi Sela in the Happy Valley Challenger in the Australian swing. He is well placed to replicate that run in Columbus after two straight sets wins to open his tournament. He defeated the potentially tricky Mikael Torpegaard, who had won the first Columbus Challenger of 2016 just a few weeks ago. Last night he defeated Mikelis Libietis of Latvia 6-3, 6-3 for easy progress into the last eight.
His opponent will be Irish eighth seed Sam Barry, who has also recorded two straight sets wins over Strong Kirchheimer and Dennis Nevolo. Though Barry is seeded at this tournament, there are more than two hundred ranking positions between him and the top seed Fritz. The young American must therefore be considered the heavy favourite.
Stefan Kozlov and Kevin King will meet in the second quarter’s quarter-final, as they both continued the trend of recording straight sets wins. Kozlov, the third seed, defeated Dominik Koepfer 6-3, 6-4, and Kevin King accounted for Christian Harrison 6-3, 6-3. King only received entry into the event as an alternate, but has performed well, having defeated the badly out-of-form Austin Krajicek in the first round.
The bottom half will see Luke Bambridge and Cameron Norrie play an all-British encounter for the right to a quarer-final place. Bambridge had lost in the last round of qualifying, but gained a lucky loser position after Rajeev Ram’s withdrawal, defeating Erik Crepaldi in the first round. Last week’s victor in Champaign, Henri Laaksonen had an easier start to this tournament. The Swiss had struggled, dropping sets in his first matches in the championship run last week, but recorded a simple 6-3, 6-3 win over an American qualifier this week. He faces John McNally, a wildcard, in the second round.
