British number one player Cameron Norrie beat Lorenzo Sonego 6-4 6-4 after 90 minutes to reach the third round at the BNP Paribas Open in Indian Wells. The 2021 Indian Wells champion is three wins shy of 200 career singles victories.
Sonego faced three consecutive break points in the third game. Norrie converted his second break point with a passing shot winner to take a 2-1 lead. Sonego earned a break-back point in the sixth game. Norrie fended it off when he was serving at 3-2 in the opening set to hold serve for 4-2 after a backhand error from Sonego and dropped just one point on his serve in the rest of the first set.
Norrie held on his next service games to close out the first set 6-4.
Sonego broke serve in the second game to open up a 2-0 lead. Norrie broke straight back after a series of errors from Sonego. Norrie broke twice in the fifth and seventh games to open up a 5-2 lead, but he did not convert a match point. Sonego pulled one of the two breaks back to win two consecutive games for 4-5, before Norrie served out the win. The British player levelled his head-to-head series with Sonego at 1-1.
Norrie will face either Gael Monfils or Hubert Hurkacz.
Norrie will team up with Francisco Cerundolo in a doubles match against Santiago Gonzales and Neal Skupski. Sonego will take the court again to play alongside Jannik Sinner in the doubles match against Andrey Rublev and Karen Khachanov.
“I missed a couple of balls, and he started playing a little bit better. I missed two first balls that I should make and I was down 0-30. I was like: ‘I did not do anything that special, just made a lot of first serves. I made fortunate to be through”, said Norrie.
