MONTREAL \u2014 Ben Shelton is still on course to repeat as National Bank Open champion.<\/p>\n
The fifth-seeded American defeated up-and-coming Brazilian Joao Fonseca 6-3, 7-6 (3) in the men\u2019s singles Round of 16 on Sunday night at IGA Stadium.<\/p>\n
Shelton \u2014 whose serves approached 230 kilometres per hour \u2014 hit five aces to Fonseca\u2019s zero while putting 71 per cent of his first serves in play to reach his seventh quarterfinal at an ATP Masters 1000 event.<\/p>\n
The 19-year-old Fonseca, seeded 22nd, had three double faults and won just 58 per cent of his first-serve points.<\/p>\n
Shelton, 23, won his first Masters 1000 title last year in Toronto. At No. 10 in the world, he\u2019s the highest-ranked player remaining in the tournament after several top seeds exited or withdrew before the third round.<\/p>\n
He\u2019ll face the winner of Sunday\u2019s late match between No. 13 seed Jakub Mensik of Czechia and Botic van de Zandschulp of the Netherlands in the quarterfinals.<\/p>\n
Shelton won a back-and-forth first set with a late break to go up 5-3. After trading several points at deuce, Shelton finally broke on his second opportunity to end a game that lasted 19 minutes.<\/p>\n
The big-serving lefty then held serve comfortably, beating Fonseca with a well-placed lob before firing a forehand winner down the line to take the opening set.<\/p>\n
Fonseca \u2014 backed by recurring chants of \u201cJooo-ao! Fon-se-caaaa!\u201d \u2014 responded with a 3-0 start to the second set after breaking Shelton with a sweet lob.<\/p>\n
Trouble struck a few games later as the Brazilian, while defending a break point, appeared to twist his right ankle while jumping for a smash.<\/p>\n
Shelton ultimately broke back when Fonseca sent a backhand wide, then held serve to tie the set at three games apiece.<\/p>\n
Fonseca carried on and took a 6-5 lead, fending off a break point with one of several forehand winners.<\/p>\n
Shelton, however, easily forced a tiebreak and jumped out to a 3-0 advantage, with a frustrated Fonseca unable to handle his serve. Fonseca then struck a backhand wide on serve to give Shelton a 6-2 advantage and four match points before sending a backhand into the net two points later.<\/p>\n
Earlier Sunday, 20-year-old American Learner Tien advanced to the quarterfinals with a 6-4, 6-4 win over Argentina\u2019s Thiago Agustin Tirante.<\/p>\n
Tien will meet Spain\u2019s Daniel Merida Aguilar, who took down Tallon Griekspoor of the Netherlands 6-3, 6-1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MONTREAL \u2014 Ben Shelton is still on course to repeat as National Bank Open champion. The fifth-seeded American…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":852403,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[442],"tags":[49,48,82,593],"class_list":["post-852402","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\/852402","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=852402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/852403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=852402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=852402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=852402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}