World No. 5 Daniil Medvedev had to battle hard against Dominic Thiem on Thursday at the Erste Bank Open, but the top seed's persistence paid off as he scripted a 6-3, 6-3 second-round win in Vienna.
Both players came out firing in a hard-fought opening set. Thiem delighted the home crowd with some pure hitting off both wings from the baseline, while Medvedev countered with some trademark rebellious defence.
After claiming the first break of the match for 4-3, the top seed's variety of consistent, strong hitting came to the fore as he clinched a 98-minute victory.
"It was a tough match. Around one hour, 40 minutes, you know when it's one hour, 40 minutes, even if you win 6-3, 6-3, that it was a tough match. It could have gone either way. At one moment in the match, I started to put a lot of pressure on his serve. I was serving good myself, so didn't (give) him too many opportunities on my serve, and that was the key today I think," ATP.com quoted Medvedev as saying after his win.
"That was the first game in the match where I actually won the first point on his serve. Otherwise, it was 40/0 for him all the time, so a little bit tougher to break. In this game, I managed to put pressure on him. He had two or three game points where I managed to bring it back to deuce which is really important. When I won this game, I got a little bit of momentum during the match," said the top seed.
Medvedev will next play sixth seed Jannik Sinner, who defeated Francisco Cerundolo 7-5, 6-3.
Hubert Hurkacz also cruised into the quarter-finals by holding his nerve to claim a deciding-set win against Emil Ruusuvuori. The fifth seed reacted well to dropping the second set against the Finn, running to an unassailable 4-1 lead before clinching a 7-5, 4-6, 6-3 triumph in which he struck 41 winners.
A confident show helped Grigor Dimitrov defeat Andrey Rublev 6-3, 6-4 in 71 minutes. Dimitrov's quarter-final opponent will be Marcos Giron, who defeated Cameron Norrie in impressive style with a 6-3, 6-4 win.
( With inputs from ANI )
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