Sebastian Korda and Gael Monfils completed the head-to-head Sunshine Double on Tuesday afternoon. Monfils won their Indian Wells matchup in a pair of tiebreakers two weeks ago, but Korda got revenge with a 6-4, 2-6, 6-4 fourth-round victory at the Miami Open.
The 25th-ranked American actually won two fewer points than Monfils and his winners-to-errors ratio of minus-20 was much worse than Monfils’ minus-10. Nonetheless, Korda was the better player in the important moments as he prevailed in two hours and 12 minutes.
Korda’s reward is a quarterfinal berth alongside Novak Djokovic at the season’s second Masters 1000 tournament.
Djokovic advanced with a 6-2, 6-2 rout of Lorenzo Musetti. The 37-year-old Serb trailed by a break early in the first set, but it was on-way traffic thereafter en route to a one-hour and 23-minute victory.
“He had a really good start of the match,” Djokovic reflected. “(The) first couple games I started a little bit slow and then I knew that if I give him time, he’s going to make his shots. He loves kind of running around his backhand, hitting forehands. But he is so talented, he can play any shot in the game on any surface.
“It was tough, particularly in the first seven, eight games of the match. But I think breaking his serve to come back to 2-all and break right away at 3-2, it was a momentum shift and I tried to use that.”
Wednesday’s other quarterfinal contest pits Grigor Dimitrov against Francisco Cerundolo. Dimitrov beat Brandon Nakashima, while Cerundolo rolled over Casper Ruud.
nice one, seabass