Fallen star Alexei Popyrin has dug deep for a morale-boosting victory to join Alex de Minaur in the second round of the Montreal Masters.<\/p>\n
Two years after upstaging the great Novak Djokovic in a seismic US Open triumph, Popyrin has slumped to No.139 in the world as he battles a crisis of confidence.<\/p>\n
But after toiling through qualifying just to make the main draw, Popyrin toiled for another two hours 12 minutes to see off Argentine Roman Andres Burruchaga 4-6 7-5 6-3 to notch his first ATP-level win since May.<\/p>\n
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By continuing you agree to our Terms<\/a> and Privacy Policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n The breakthrough was only Popyrin\u2019s ninth win of a lean 2026 campaign and vaulted to the one-time world No.19 into a second-round contest with US seventh seed Taylor Fritz or another Argentine, Thiago Agustin Tirante.<\/p>\n De Minaur, meanwhile, looked to be cruising before fellow Sydneysider James Duckworth put the world No.7 through the ringer late on.<\/p>\n Runner-up in 2023, de Minaur was a set and 3-1 up before Duckworth fought back hard seeking a first win over his countryman in three meetings.<\/p>\n But de Minaur held firm to fend off six set points and progress 6-2 7-6 (8-6) and book a third-round date with either Brit Cameron Norrie or Peru\u2019s Ignacio Buse.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the first set everything was flowing,\u201d de Minaur said after the one-hour, 46-minute dogfight.<\/p>\n \u201cI was up a break, had a couple more chances to go up by a double break and all of a sudden it slips away.<\/p>\n \u201cThen all of a sudden momentum shifts and we got into a battle. So I am glad I was able to sneak through. There are a couple of things I need to tighten up on, but we live to fight another day.\u201d<\/p>\n While de Minuar and Poprin move on, fellow Australian Adam Walton crashed out with a 6-3 6-4 loss to American Jenson Brooksby.<\/p>\n In the women\u2019s WTA event in Toronto, Tahlia Gibson continued her stellar 2026 season with an upset 7-5 6-1 second-round win over Polish 18th seed Maja Chwalinska.<\/p>\n Gibson\u2019s 28th win of a breakout year earned her a crack at Russian 16th seed Ekaterina Alexandrova.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fallen star Alexei Popyrin has dug deep for a morale-boosting victory to join Alex de Minaur in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":846130,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,588,85,747],"class_list":["post-846129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sport","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846129","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=846129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/846129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/846130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=846129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=846129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=846129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}