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Montreal’s F\u00e9lix Auger-Aliassime narrowly avoided an upset at the Terra Wortmann Open, rallying for a 6-7 (5), 7-5, 7-6 (5) win over Learner Tien of the United States in second-round action Wednesday in Halle, Germany. <\/p>\n
Auger-Aliassime, the tennis tournament’s second seed, trailed 4-1 and 5-3 in the third-set tiebreaker before clinching the match in two hours 31 minutes with four straight points. <\/p>\n
The match was close despite Auger-Aliassime’s dominance on serve. He had 22 aces and won 88 per cent of first-serve points. <\/p>\n
Breaks were hard to come by, with Auger-Aliassime converting two and Tien scoring one. But Auger-Aliassime’s win against serve to go up 6-5 in the second set was a turning point in a match that left little room for error. <\/p>\n
A loss to world No. 19 Tien at the ATP 500 event would have put Auger-Aliassime’s career-high ranking of No. 4 in jeopardy, with No. 5 Alex de Minaur and No. 6 Ben Shelton still playing in tournaments this week. <\/p>\n
Instead, a quarterfinal win in Halle over Frances Tiafoe will ensure he retains that ranking deeper into the grass-court season. <\/p>\n
Auger-Aliassime is 3-0 against Tiafoe, but hasn’t faced the American since the Paris Masters quarterfinals in 2022. <\/p>\n
Fernandez, partner win 81 per cent of 1st-serve points <\/p>\n
Canada’s Leylah Fernandez and Ukraine’s Yuliia Starodubtseva advanced to the doubles quarterfinals at the Nottingham Open with a 6-0, 6-2 win over Taiwan’s Wu Fang-Hsien and Japan’s Eri Hozumi on Wednesday in England. <\/p>\n
Fernandez and Starodubtseva were strong on serve, winning 81 per cent of first-serve points and 64 per cent on second serve.<\/p>\n
The winners saved both break points they faced, while converting breaks on five of seven chances. <\/p>\n
Fernandez and Starodubtseva will face another Taiwanese-Japanese combo in the quarterfinals at the WTA 250 grass-court event, second seeds Chan Hao-ching and Shuko Aoyama. <\/p>\n
Fernandez, from Laval, Que., has struggled in singles play this year but has had an encouraging doubles run on grass so far. <\/p>\n
She teamed with Germany’s Laura Siegemund to reach the final of the HSBC Championships last week <\/p>\n
De Minaur dominant, again, vs. Shapovalov <\/p>\n
Australia’s Alex de Minaur continued his mastery of Canada’s Denis Shapovalov on the ATP Tour with a 6-4, 6-1 win in second-round action Wednesday at the HSBC Championships in London, England. <\/p>\n
De Minaur, the top seed at the ATP 500 grass-court event at West London’s Queen’s Club, improved to 6-0 against Shapovalov on the top men’s tennis circuit. <\/p>\n
Shapovalov’s last win against de Minaur came nine years ago and about 18 kilometres away, when he beat the Australian in the final round of qualifying for the Challenger-level Surbiton Trophy. <\/p>\n
Shapovalov outaced de Minaur 7-0 in Wednesday’s match at Andy Murray Arena and had 16 winners to his opponent’s nine. But he also hit into nine double-faults and was broken five times on 11 chances. <\/p>\n
De Minaur, ranked No. 6 in the world, saved three of four break points and made 11 unforced errors, compared to 29 committed by Shapovalov. <\/p>\n
Shapovalov has dropped six of his last seven singles matches and has a 9-13 record this year. <\/p>\n
De Minaur, who defeated Montreal’s Gabriel Diallo in the first round, will next face Brandon Nakashima of the United States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":743704,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-743703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tennis","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-tennis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=743703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/743704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=743703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=743703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=743703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}