Stefanos Tsitsipas has advanced to the last 16 of a Masters 1000 tournament for the first time in over a year.<\/p>\n
The Greek player has rediscovered some crucial form at the Madrid Open, and will meet defending champion Casper Ruud<\/a> for a spot in the quarterfinals. Tsitsipas last reached this stage at a Masters 1000 during last year’s Monte Carlo event.<\/p>\n At that time, a back injury threatened to derail his career<\/a>. He withdrew in the first round of Wimbledon<\/a>, and subsequently didn’t compete in an official match from September until January. Tsitsipas has now disclosed that the injury stripped him of his enjoyment on the court and occupied his thoughts constantly, as he wondered whether he’d keep waking up in pain.<\/p>\n “When I was injured I lost passion and love for the game. I kept showing up though. Despite my injury in the back, I kept showing up on court and trying to make the most out of it,” Tsitsipas said after reaching the fourth round in Madrid.<\/p>\n “It’s frustrating when you’re always injured and you’re always feeling hurt. It doesn’t make you love the game too much. I can finally kind of say that, going back into the court now, it feels a really joyful thing to do. Like, there isn’t much of stress whether I’m going to be fit enough because of my back.”<\/p>\n For Tsitsipas, that had not been the reality for quite some time. “Before, it used to occupy my mind 24\/7. From the moment I woke up until the very night, I wasn’t sure if I’m going to wake up the next morning feeling good. Going with that sort of uncertainty onto everyday life, especially being professional tennis player, makes it even worse,” he added.<\/p>\n Tsitsipas arrived in Madrid riding a three-match losing streak, having dropped six of his last eight matches. Sitting at No. 80 in the world rankings \u2014 his lowest position since February 2018 \u2014 he fought back from a break down to defeat lucky loser Patrick Kypson 3-6 7-6(6) 7-6(4) in the opening round, narrowly avoiding yet another early departure.<\/p>\n Afterward, he appeared to be blinking back tears as he opened up about his recent poor run of form. “It’s exhausting,” Tsitsipas stated. “I need a bit more confidence in my game. I think wins are important, and why wins are important is because they start building trust and faith, that you still got it.<\/p>\n “When you’re stepping out on the court, and you are kind of winless, you don’t have a lot of wins under your belt, it doesn’t help, feeling prepared and feeling like you got this to the fullest, to the maximum.”<\/p>\n Tsitsipas has turned his fortunes around over the past two weeks, however. He cruised past eighth seed Alexander Bublik 6-2, 7-5 in the second round and has since defeated Spanish qualifier Daniel Merida 6-4, 6-2 to advance to the second week. The Greek star appears to be rediscovering his best tennis, but the challenge will intensify as he now faces defending champion Ruud.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stefanos Tsitsipas has advanced to the last 16 of a Masters 1000 tournament for the first time in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":635934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,3539,51612,280666,85,35899,747,6414,307938],"class_list":["post-635933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-back-injury","tag-casper-ruud","tag-madrid-open","tag-sports","tag-stefanos-tsitsipas","tag-tennis","tag-tennis-section","tag-tennis-career-recovery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635933","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=635933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/635934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}