Monte Carlo [Monaco], April 13 : Jannik Sinner braved windy conditions and a strong charge from Hubert Hurkacz to book a third-round victory at the Monte-Carlo Masters on Thursday.
The seventh-seeded Italian scripted a stunning comeback win against Hurkacz to register a 3-6, 7-6(6), 6-1 triumph at the clay-court ATP Masters 1000 event.
Sinner was on the verge of defeat after recovering his early deficit in the second set, trailing 5/6 in the second-set tie-break. Nonetheless, he saved the match point and clinched the second set before dominating the decider on Court Rainier III.
Italian will either face World No. 1 Novak Djokovic or Lorenzo Musetti quarter-finals.
"It was a very tough match. Playing against him, I knew already from the beginning that it was very tough to get into the rhythm. I think he served incredibly in the first one and a half sets, and when I broke him the first time the momentum changed a little bit," ATP.com quoted Jannik Sinner as saying.
"He also had match point. These kinds of matches can go both ways, I'm happy that it went my way, and happy that I can play at least one more match [here]," he added.
"I can feel the energy of the crowd. There are a lot of Italians here and they helped me a lot, especially when I'm in a very tough situation on the court. This helps me, and I try to get a lot of energy from that. Let's see what's coming from the next round," said Sinner, when asked about the vocal Italian contingent in the Monte-Carlo crowd.
Elsewhere at the Court des Princes, Andrey Rublev earned his 50th tour-level win on clay Thursday after he moved past Karen Khachanov 7-6(4), 6-2 to reach the quarter-finals at the Monte-Carlo Masters.
"We know each other too well. The first set was only mental. We didn't show some tennis skills. But it was tough to show skills because the wind was really hard and the court was slippery and it was tough to do something. The first set was super mental. As soon as I was able to win a set, I started to feel freer and I felt Karen felt more down, so that was the difference," Rublev said.
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