Fresh off an upset of Novak Djokovic, Stefanos Tsitsipas will try to keep his Toronto run going when he faces Alexander Zverev during quarterfinal action on Friday. Meanwhile, Kevin Anderson is going up against Grigor Dimitrov.
Stefanos Tsitsipas vs. (2) Alexander Zverev
Tsitsipas is storming into prominence this season and he took his meteoric rise to new heights with the biggest win of his career on Thursday at the Rogers Cup–a 6-3, 6-7(5), 6-3 upset of Novak Djokovic. The 19-year-old owns three victories over higher-ranked opponents (Djokovic is currently 10th), but beating a former world No. 1 and reigning Wimbledon champion to reach the quarterfinals of a Masters 1000 event is as good as it gets so far for Tsitsipas. He is now 28-18 for the season and 9-2 in his last 11 matches, a stretch that includes a semifinal showing in Washington, D.C. and additional wins this week over Damir Dzumhur and Dominic Thiem.
Next up for Tsitsipas on Friday is a second career contest against Zverev, who just ended the Greek’s Washington, D.C. run with a 6-2, 6-4 rout. Zverev went on to lift the trophy last week, just as he did at that same 500-point tournament in 2017. The 21-year-old German maintained momentum from last summer’s triumph in D.C. by winning the Rogers Cup, so there is no reason to think that fatigue will suddenly set in this time around. After all, Zverev has dropped only one set during his current seven-match winning streak and he has surrendered just 13 total games through two rounds in Toronto. This should be more competitive than last Saturday’s battle, but Zverev simply looks too good right now and Tsitsipas has to make a quick turnaround following his huge result against Djokovic.
Pick: Zverev in 3
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(5) Grigor Dimitrov vs. (4) Kevin Anderson
Anderson and Dimitrov will be squaring off for the eighth time in their careers on Friday. Dimitrov is dominating the head-to-head series 6-1 at the ATP level, including 3-1 on hard courts (2-0 outdoors) and 1-0 at the Rogers Cup. Their 2014 quarterfinal clash in Toronto was nothing short of infamous, as both players took turns enduring incredible chokes and Anderson double-faulted seven times–including on match point–en route to a 7-6(1), 3-6, 7-6(5) loss.
This one should produce higher quality, mainly because Anderson is displaying the best form of his career. The sixth-ranked South African is coming off a runner-up performance at Wimbledon and he has improved to 31-11 for the year with Toronto victories over Evgeny Donskoy (in a third-set tiebreaker) and Ilya Ivashka. Dimitrov’s season has been a struggle on the heels of a 2017 triumph at the Nitto ATP Finals, but he has done extremely well this week to scrape past Fernando Verdasco and Frances Tiafoe in final-set tiebreakers. Although fifth-ranked Bulgarian got away with some lapses on serve against his first two opponents, a red-hot Anderson will not be as generous and should be able to capitalize on Dimitrov’s depleted gas tank.
Pick: Anderson in 2
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