Carlos Alcaraz showed no sign of being hampered by an ankle injury as he beat Belgium’s Zizou Bergs 6-4, 6-3 on Saturday to reach the Japan Open quarter-finals.<\/p>\n
The world number one hurt himself two days earlier in his opening match in Tokyo, crumpling to the ground before playing on with his ankle heavily strapped.<\/p>\n
The Spaniard was left sweating on his fitness, but he showed no evidence of discomfort as he returned to the court<\/a> to beat world number 45 Bergs<\/a> in front of an adoring Japanese crowd.<\/p>\n Alcaraz<\/a> got the job done in an hour and 20 minutes and will face American Brandon Nakashima<\/a> in the next round on Sunday.<\/p>\n Alcaraz took to the court with white strapping visible underneath the sock on his left ankle.<\/p>\n He did not appear to be restricted in his movement, but he limped briefly after chasing a shot that won Bergs a break early in the first set.<\/p>\n Alcaraz is playing in Japan for the first time and he delighted the crowd with a series of leaping forehand winners, claiming the first set despite having his service broken twice.<\/p>\n He raced into an early lead in the second set, but Bergs made him work hard for the victory with a gritty performance.<\/p>\n Alcaraz sealed the deal with a thumping forehand at the net that Bergs could not return into play.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Carlos Alcaraz showed no sign of being hampered by an ankle injury as he beat Belgium’s Zizou Bergs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172926,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":{"0":"post-172925","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172925\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}