Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner have established themselves as two of the top players in the world today, despite their young age, but another youngster is making waves here in the Shanghai Masters.
Enter Flavio Cobolli, who is slowly moving up in the ATP rankings. The 30th-seeded star just made it to the Round of 32 in Shanghai, where he’ll get to face his childhood idol, Novak Djokovic, for the first time ever in his young career.
Novak Djokovic will meet his 22-year-old admirer after a challenging Round of 64 victory over Alex Michelsen as he tries to regain his bearings after slipping to fourth in the updated ATP rankings.
Speaking of Alcaraz and Sinner, both players are already through to the Round of 16, as expected according to the SBOTOP Shanghai Masters 2024 odds, alongside Daniil Medvedev and Tommy Paul.
Cobolli got a lucky break from poor officiating
Flavio Cobolli secured a huge comeback win to defeat Stan Wawrinka on Tuesday, but it was not without controversy.
After dropping the first set, Cobolli forced a decisive third set after taking the second. The young Italian served first in the decider and won the opening game, and he went on to break Wawrinka’s serve in the second game, the first and only service break of the match after more than two hours.
However, Cobolli broke Wawrinka’s serve largely because of Carlos Bernardes’ questionable officiating.
The first point of the game should have gone to Wawrinka after a wide return by Cobolli, but the chair umpire inexplicably gave the point to the latter. Cobolli won the next point, and the score was 0-30 even if it should’ve been 15-15.
For some reason, nobody noticed Bernardes’ error, but it didn’t escape the eyes of Nick Kyrgios, who has a huge beef with the veteran chair umpire.
“BERNARDES SHOULD HAVE BEEN FIRED YEARS AGO. HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN. Potato,” Kyrgios posted on his X (formerly known as Twitter) account.
Cobolli never looked back from there, and now he will try to secure the first Top 10 win of his career after losing his first seven attempts.
This season, Cobolli has earned 34 tour-level victories and won at least one match at all four majors, a marked improvement from last year.
Alcaraz extends unbeaten run
Carlos Alcaraz is through to the Shanghai Masters fourth round after defeating wildcard Wu Yibing in straight sets. This was his 11th win in a row after a shocking second-round exit at the US Open in August.
The young Spaniard officially ruined the Chinese party in Shanghai because he also defeated Shang Juncheng in the opener before beating Wu Yibing.
Wu Yibing made Alcaraz work extra hard to win, particularly over a significant portion of the first set before losing the tiebreak.
The 24-year-old Hangzhou native continued to make Alcaraz work for his service games in the second set, but a slight lapse in the sixth game did him in, and that was all she wrote.
This was Carlos Alcaraz’s 50th tour-level win of the year after clinching his fourth title of the season at the China Open in Beijing last week. He also now has 100 hard-court wins under his belt.
Carlos Alcaraz will take on the winner between Gael Monfils and Ugo Humbert in the Round of 16. As of this writing, Monfils won the first set.
Sinner survive huge scare in the Round of 32
Jannik Sinner also had to earn his spot in the Round of 16 after passing the test posed by Tomas Martin Etcheverry during their Round of 32 matchup that lasted for nearly three hours filled with Shanghai Masters 2024 highlights.
Etcheverry won the opening set by holding his nerve. As he faced two set points, the Argentine international kicked things up a notch to rally out of trouble and eventually pull clear in a tiebreak.
However, Sinner dug deep in the second set, as he leveled the match to one set apiece, despite exchanging breaks in the fifth and sixth games.
With momentum not on his side, Etcheverry saved three break points in the first game of the penultimate set, but Sinner proved to be too much to handle for Etcheverry, who dropped serve in the third game.
Sinner withstood three more break points in a dragging sixth game before eventually sealing the win to improve to 2-0 against Etcheverry in their overall head-to-heads.
The world No. 1 player will compete against the winner between Roberto Carballes Baena and Ben Shelton for a spot in the final eight.
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