{"id":272821,"date":"2026-06-20T20:50:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T20:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/272821\/"},"modified":"2026-06-20T20:50:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T20:50:11","slug":"tennis-atp-hsbc-championships-2026-cerundolo-upends-nakashima","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/272821\/","title":{"rendered":"Tennis, ATP \u2013 HSBC Championships 2026: Cerundolo upends Nakashima"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Argentinian seventh seed Francisco Cerundolo came through a high-wire contest of constant breaks on Saturday afternoon, edging American Brandon Nakashima 6-7 (5), 6-3, 6-4 to reach the final of the HSBC Championships, the biggest of his career so far.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Neither man could hold serve with any certainty in a match that lasted two hours and 43 minutes. Cerundolo served for the first set but was broken back immediately, the pattern of the afternoon, and the tie-break went Nakashima\u2019s way.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Argentinian responded by breaking twice in both the second and third sets, and this time made the advantage stand, holding on at the death to complete the win after nearly three hours of swings.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIt was a really tough match, to be honest,\u201d Cerundolo said in his on-court interview. \u201cI served for the first set, he broke me immediately, then I broke and he broke back. The third set was the same \u2013 I broke at the beginning and he broke me, and luckily at the end when I broke I could hold myself.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Paul next<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He credited the crowd and his camp, including new coach Nicol\u00e1s Mass\u00fa, for carrying him over the line. \u201cI was telling them, I\u2019m going to leave it all out here, and let\u2019s see what happens. It worked out, so I\u2019m super happy.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>  <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patrickmouratoglou.com\/en\/champion-mindset-pre-order\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"mx-auto\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><br \/>\n    <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Banner-Social-Media-Facebook-scaled.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"aspect-3-1 mx-auto max-w-full overflow-hidden object-cover md:max-w-xl\"\/><br \/>\n  <\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Cerundolo had reached the semi-finals with wins over Englishman Arthur Fery (7-6 (1), 3-6, 6-4), American Jenson Brooksby (6-0, 6-4) and American Aleksandar Kovacevic (6-4, 6-7 (5), 6-2).<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Nakashima, ranked No 32, had been the man to end top seed Alex de Minaur\u2019s tournament in the previous round (7-5, 6-3), having earlier beaten Peruvian Ignacio Buse (6-2, 6-2) and Hungarian Marton Fucsovics (6-3, 6-3).<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Cerundolo, ranked No 27, will face American Tommy Paul, the No 8 seed, who won against Frenchman Ugo Humbert 6-3, 6-3. Paul was the champion in 2024.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Argentinian seventh seed Francisco Cerundolo came through a high-wire contest of constant breaks on Saturday afternoon, edging American&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272822,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-272821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}