The machine that is Daniil Medvedev marched into round four of the BNP Paribas Open with ease, but it was an otherwise eventful Monday in the desert.
Four of the eight third-round matchups in the top half of the men’s singles draw saw the seeded player or higher-seeded player lose. Andrey Rublev was upset by Tommy Paul, Denis Shapovalov went down to Aslan Karatsev, Reilly Opelka lost to Grigor Dimitrov, and Roberto Bautista Agut came out on the short end of a three-setter against Cameron Norrie.
Rublev’s loss was the most surprising. The fifth-ranked Russian is next in line to qualify for the Nitto ATP Finals behind Medvedev, Novak Djokovic, Stefanos Tsitsipas, and Alexander Zverev, but on a rare occasion in 2021 he did not look like one of the best players in the world on Monday. Even with one of the biggest forehands on tour, Rublev struggled to hit through the slow conditions and Paul prevailed 6-4, 3-6, 7-5.
The 60th-ranked American failed to serve out the match at 5-3 in the third set, but he eventually built a 0-40 lead on his opponent’s serve in the 12th game and converted his second match point.
“I’m not thinking too much,” Paul said when asked about his mentality after getting broken. “I was pretty happy to be out there, so it wasn’t like the end of the world getting broken there. I had match point and obviously I wanted to win the match there. But I felt comfortable throughout the match.
“I knew that I would have chances either to break back or [win] in the ‘breaker, even if I just raised the level of my serve a little bit. I would have had a lot of chances to win that ‘breaker.”
Surprisingly, there were also no tiebreakers necessary in the Opelka-Dimitrov match. Perhaps even more impressive than not facing a break point the entire way, Dimitrov managed to break the 6’11” American once in each set. That was enough for the 30-year-old Bulgarian to cruise 6-3, 6-4 in just one hour and 13 minutes.
Dimitrov’s reward is a fourth-round date with Medvedev on Wednesday.
nice one, TP