Milan, Italy
It appeared Denis Shapovalov was going to cruise through his Wednesday night Group A match against crowd favourite Gianluigi Quinzi.
Winning the first two sets 4-1, 4-1 in a span of just 29 minutes, Shapovalov was playing some immaculate tennis. In the second set alone he had 9 winners, not a single error and won all eight points on his serve.
However, the 21-year old Quinzi, who got into the tournament as a wildcard after winning an event in Italy last week, didn’t want to be embarrassed on his home floor and turned things around midway through the third set.
After fending off a break point with a nice stab volley which would have given the 18-year old Canadian a 3-1 lead, Quinzi held serve and in the following game broke Shapovalov for the first time in the match.
Quinzi, like Shapovalov, a former Junior Wimbledon champion, was broken in the next game but came out flying in the tiebreak. He went up 5-1 before Shapovalov battled back to make it interesting but then an errant backhand gave Quinzi the set.
In the fourth the players held serve forcing another tiebreak. The Italian again got ahead 3-1 but Shapovalov used his big match experience to get back into it. He went up 5-4 with a brilliant shot combination. After double faulting attempting to close out the match, “Shapo” was able to close things out on the next point when Quinzi’s backhand went long. 4-1, 4-1, 3-4, 4-3 the final scoreline in an hour and 29 minutes.
Shapovalov had 41 winners to just 5 from his opponent. He had 10 aces and won 14 of 17 points at the net. He also won 87 percent of points on his serve.
“I played really well today,” said Shapovalov. “Throughout the whole match, I was in control….I think I kept my level up. It was tough mentally to stay in that match losing the third set in a breaker and not having many chances to break in the 4th but I kept fighting and sticking to my game and eventually I was able to close it out.”
The No 51 ranked player in the world has a win and a loss in his first two matches. To advance to Friday’s semi-finals he will have to defeat Andrey Rublev ranked 14 sports better at No 37. They will meet for the first time in the first night session match on Thursday at 7:30pm local time. The winner moves on, the loser goes home to start their off-season.
@Sportshorn
