The Australian No. 1 Alex de Minaur is that -Bundle from the BNP Paribas Open to the 16th after a shock of Francisco Cerundolo in Indian Wells. Argentinian stopped an out-of-Sorts de Minaur to reach the quarter-finals with 7-5 6-3 success on Wednesday.
De Minaur had his chances against No 25 seed but could only achieve three of the 14 break points, while Cerundolo sealed everything but one of his seven to win the straight sets. The world no 10 uncharacteristically found it as difficult to find its range from the baseline with 39 unexpected errors and nine winners only in one hour and 50-minute matches.
Cerundolo saved a set point in serving 5-5 initially then made most of the error performance filled with De Minaur’s error to turn the tables on 26-year-old. De Minaur knocked Cerundolo out of the Australian Open in four sets and entered this quarrel in an unknown form as he marched on the last 16 without dropping a set but it was the Argentinian who would now advance to a fifth ATP Masters 1000 quarter-final.
“I’m happy, I know it’s going to be a battle today,” Cerundolo said. “Alex is a amazing-amazing player, a fighter. He was having some good years, a top-10 player and we had a battle in Australia and it went to his side but now I have another match, another chance and I think I’ve really done. I’m happy to beat a high-quality player and in the quarter-finals in Indian Wells.”
Cerundolo’s in-form will face twice defending champion Carlos Alcaraz or 14th seed grigor Dimitrov for the last eight a month after reaching an ATP final in Buenos Aires.
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Everywhere, Jack Draper booked his place in the quarter-finals with a straight set of success with third seed Taylor Fritz. Draper won seven consecutive games from the latter on the first set on the road to a 7-5 6-4 success and next to face Ben Shelton after being defeated by the American 11th seed Brandon Nakashima 7-6 6-1.
