\n See draw<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
Joao Fonseca continued his stunning breakout season, beating Casper Ruud 7-6(6), 6-3 on Friday night to reach the last 16 of the National Bank Open presented by Rogers in Montreal, and setting up a blockbuster meeting with the defending champion Ben Shelton.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The 19-year-old Brazilian, seeded 22nd and ranked No 27, made it back-to-back wins over the Norwegian, having already ousted him at Roland-Garros earlier this year.<\/p>\n
This one followed a similar script of resilience and rising power. Ruud, the No 9 seed, led 4-2 in the opening set and looked in control, but from there it turned into a one-way street: Fonseca reeled him in, edged a tense tiebreak 8-6, and then pulled clear in the second to close out an impressive victory.<\/p>\n
It is a landmark result for the teenager \u2014 his first Masters 1000 last-16 in Canada, and his third of a remarkable 2026 (all of them coming this season), along with a fourth top-20 win of the year. Having already dispatched Stefanos Tsitsipas (7-6(3), 7-5) in the previous round, Fonseca is showing up elite level.<\/p>\n
Fonseca : \u201cI\u2019ll be ready\u201d<\/p>\n
Next comes the biggest test of all: American Ben Shelton, the No 5 seed and defending champion, who is tearing through the draw. Shelton eased past Zizou Bergs 6-3, 6-2 to extend his winning streak in Canada to eight matches, and stands as the last top-10 man left in the field.<\/p>\n
Fonseca is relishing it. Asked on court what he had learned from their earlier meeting this year, which Shelton won, the Brazilian said: \u201cA lot of experience, for sure. Playing with the big guys this year was really important for my development. That match was on another surface, a little bit of altitude, and he was serving well. He\u2019ll serve well here too, that\u2019s for sure \u2013 but I think I\u2019ll be prepared. He\u2019s a nice guy, and I don\u2019t need to say how good he is on court. I\u2019m just trying to rest and be ready for Sunday.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"National Bank Open presented by Rogers \u2022Third round \u2022 Completed See draw Joao Fonseca continued his stunning breakout…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":847622,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[565],"tags":[64,63,85,747],"class_list":["post-847621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847621","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=847621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/847621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/847622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=847621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=847621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=847621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}