Brandon Nakashima is through to the semi-finals of the ATP-WTA Cincinnati Masters after a win over fellow American Taylor Fritz. Photo: AFP <\/p>\n
CINCINNATI: <\/p>\n
Brandon Nakashima continued his red-hot pace on Friday, knocking out sixth-seeded Taylor Fritz 7-6 (11\/9), 4-6, 6-3 to reach the ATP-WTA Cincinnati Masters semi-finals.<\/p>\n
Unseeded Czech Sara Bejlek also advanced, backing up her stunning victory over world number one Aryna Sabalenka with a 3-6, 6-4, 7-6 (7\/5) quarter-final win over Madison Keys.<\/p>\n
Bejlek, 20, booked a semi-final showdown with fourth-seeded American Coco Gauff, who powered to a 6-2, 6-2 victory over 10th-seeded Ukrainian Marta Kostyuk.<\/p>\n
Nakashima lined up an all-American men’s semi against Frances Tiafoe, who out-lasted Italian Lorenzo Musetti 7-6 (7\/2) 7-5.<\/p>\n
Nakashima began his post-Wimbledon hard court run with a Washington semi-final, which he lost to Fritz, a run to the final in the Montreal Masters and now his best showing at Cincinnati — all with the US Open start barely more than a week away.<\/p>\n
Nakashima withstood 22 aces from Fritz — who also bashed 31 unforced errors.<\/p>\n
Nakashima trailed by a break in the third set but broke back to knot it at 3-3 and broke again for a 5-3 lead, out-hitting the powerful Fritz and converting his first match point with a forehand winner.<\/p>\n
“I’ve gotten a lot of confidence over the summer,” Nakashima said. “In the final set I trusted my game, I’m proud with how I ended the match.”<\/p>\n
Tiafoe needed four match points to get past Musetti in a match played at a slow but intense pace.<\/p>\n
“He’s a hell of a player, he makes you beat him – and that’s what I did,” said Tiafoe, who was broken the first time he served for the match but won the next two games. “Each match is its own story. I just go out and compete as hard as I can.”<\/p>\n
Bejlek keeps believing\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bejlek got off to a slow start against big-hitting Keys, a former Australian open champion and the 2019 winner in Cincinnati.<\/p>\n
Bejlek trailed 0-3 on the way to dropping the first set but rode a wave of momentum shifts into the final four.<\/p>\n
The Czech broke first in the third set only for Keys to battle back and force the tiebreaker, in which Bejlek rallied from 4-2 down on the way to a victory capped by a stinging winner down the line on match point.<\/p>\n
“I just kept believing in the match no matter what,” said Bejlek, who won her first WTA title in Abu Dhabi in February as a qualifier.<\/p>\n
“I believed much more than ever, it was always in my head.”<\/p>\n
After a solid first set the 24th-ranked Keys broke in the third game of the second, but Bejlek, ranked 35th, broke back in the sixth and held for a 4-3 lead.<\/p>\n
Keys answered with a love game, but Bejlek turned the tables two games later to force the third.<\/p>\n
Two-time Grand Slam winner Gauff was dialed-in from the start against Kostyuk, breaking the 10th seed six times on the way to victory in 70 minutes.<\/p>\n
Kostyuk, who had been 5-0 in quarter-finals this year, managed one break in each set, but they were minor hiccups for Gauff who lost just five points behind her first serve.<\/p>\n
“Every match is getting better for me,” Gauff said. “I’m being more decisive, my serve is improving and it is getting more and more rare for me to be broken.”<\/p>\n
She was expecting a challenge from the rising Bejlek.<\/p>\n
“Sara is a great player,” Gauff said. “I watched her win the title in Abu Dhabi. She’s so athletic and fast, but she makes you earn every point.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Brandon Nakashima is through to the semi-finals of the ATP-WTA Cincinnati Masters after a win over fellow American…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55948,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[883,2819,8551,221],"class_list":["post-55947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-taylor-fritz","tag-cincinnati","tag-fritz","tag-nakashima","tag-taylor-fritz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}