World No.1 Daniil Medvedev has made a winning return to the Tour by easing to a straight sets win in his opening match at the Los Cabos Open.
Medvedev, who is making his debut in the tournament, eased his way to a 6-4, 6-3, win over Australian qualifier Rinky Hijikata who had won three matches earlier this week. The top seed hit a total of five aces and won 84% of his first service points en route to what is his 250th victory on the Tour. Medvedev is only the second man born after 1995 to have reached that milestone so far in their career.
“Somebody told me this a few days ago at media day, otherwise I would not have known,” atptour.com quoted Medvedev as saying of the milestone. “That’s probably a milestone in a way. For sure I want more victories but that’s also nice to have 250. We’ll try to get more.”
This week is the first time the Russian has played a match since losing in the quarter-finals of the Mallorca Open more than a month ago. He was unable to play at Wimbledon due to its ban on Russian players participating.
“It’s definitely not that easy to play after you stop for a while, especially [playing my] first match on hard courts in a long, long time, since Miami,” he said. “Sensations were not bad. I could have just broke a little bit more, but when you win, everything is fine. I have to play like this in the next matches.”
Medvedev, who was given a bye in the first round, will play Lithuania’s Ricardas Berankis in the quarter-finals.
Also through to the last eight is third seed Cameron Norrie who stormed to a 6-3, 6-0, win over Tseng Chun-Hsin. Playing his first match since reaching the semi-finals at Wimbledon, the Brit won 69% of his service points during the 73-minute match. He has now won nine matches at Los Cabos in his career which is a tournament record. The only other player to reach that number is America’s Taylor Fritz.
“It’s great to be back in Mexico, I always love coming here. I don’t why but I always tend to play well here,” said the defending champion.
“It’s not easy coming out after Wimbledon. I had a lot of confidence but with that comes a lot of expectations so I just tried to keep those low.’
“I was a little bit nervous in my first match under the lights so it took me a little bit to get used to. I turned it up a notch at 3-3 in the first set and it was pretty steady sailing towards the end of the second set. I was really pleased with how I handled the big points.”
Norrie faces Radu Albot in the next round who defeated Jason Kubler 6-4, 6-2.
There were also wins for Steve Johnson who defeated Thanasi Kokkinakis 6-7(3), 6-4, 6-4. Brandon Nakashima dismissed Max Purcell 6-3, 6-3. Finally, Felix Auger-Aliassime beat Mexico’s Juan Alejandro Hernandez Serrano 6-3, 7-5.