(Indian Wells) Indian Wells tournament second seed Carlos Alcaraz avenged an earlier defeat at the hands of Hungary’s Fabian Marozsan, this time winning 6-3, 6-3 to reach the quarter-finals on Tuesday.
The day after the victory of the Italian neglected Luca Nardi (123e) against the favorite Novak Djokovic in the third round, Alcaraz avoided the same trap. Marozsan (58e) eliminated him at the Italian Open last May.
At that time, Marozsan was 135e in the world and had reached the main draw through qualifying. He defeated Alcaraz 6-3, 7-6 (4) in the third round when the latter was very close to taking first place in the world.
“Honestly, I was nervous before the match. I won’t lie, Alcaraz said. Playing against someone who beat you… Today I knew what I had to do. »
Alcaraz, trying to defend his title at Indian Wells, lost the first set of his first match of the tournament this year, but then lost only 12 games in the next six sets.
He will now cross swords with the German Alexander Zverev (sixth), who won his duel against the Australian Alex de Minaur (10e) 5-7, 6-2 and 6-3.
Champion of the recent Australian Open, the Italian Jannik Sinner (third) defeated the American Ben Shelton (16e) 7-6 (4) and 6-1 to win an 18e match in a row.
Sinner took advantage of a set point at 5-4 in the first set, but was unable to take advantage. He needed 15 more minutes to end the round.
In the second, he quickly built a 3-0 lead and then cruised to victory.
Sinner now has a meeting in the quarterfinals with the Czech Jiri Lehecka (32e), winner of the Greek Stefanos Tsitsipas (11e) in two sets of 6-2 and 6-4.
Among the women, the Ukrainian Marta Kostyuk (32e) had the upper hand 6-4 and 6-1 against the Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova (24e). The Russian Anastasia Potapova (33e) defeated the Italian Jasmine Paolini (14e) 7-5, 0-6 and 6-3.