The World No. 2 won 13 of the first 14 points of the match and closed out the first set in just 27 minutes, making up for a late start to his feature night match, after the Centre Court schedule was impacted by an extended rain delay earlier in the day.<\/p>\n
It was a contrasting story in the second set, with Alcaraz trailing 2-4 before tallying four consecutive games to advance after 80 minutes. The 22-year-old won a lengthy, eight-deuce game at 4-4, during which Nardi double faulted on back-to-back points to allow the second seed to serve for the match.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think this match was the best so far for me in this tournament,\u201d Alcaraz said in his on-court interview. \u201cAt the beginning of the tournament, I just really wanted to get better every day, after every practice and every match. I think I\u2019m doing it, which I\u2019m really proud about. I\u2019m just really happy with the way I felt the ball today and the way that I moved.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Spaniard, who is seeded to meet World No. 1 Jannik Sinner<\/a> in the final for the fourth consecutive tournament in which they have both featured, next plays ninth seed Andrey Rublev<\/a>, who beat Francisco Comesana<\/a> 6-2, 6-3 to avenge last year’s Wimbledon<\/a> first-round loss to the Argentine. Rublev dropped six points behind his first serve and overwhelmed Comesana with his firepower to advance in 64 minutes.<\/p>\n A 21-time tour-level titlist, Alcaraz is seeking his first Cincinnati crown. He reached the final in 2023 and held championship point before rival Novak Djokovic<\/a> stormed back to lift the trophy. Alcaraz holds a 51-6 season record, according to the Infosys ATP Win\/Loss Index, including five titles.<\/p>\n Alcaraz leads Rublev 3-1 in their Lexus ATP Head2Head series, including a Wimbledon<\/a> fourth-round encounter last month won by the Spaniard in four sets. Their Cincinnati clash will mark their first meeting on outdoor hard courts.<\/p>\n Third seed Alexander Zverev<\/a> led 14th seed Karen Khachanov<\/a> 7-5, 3-0 when the Toronto finalist retired after 70 minutes of battle. Khachanov beat Zverev last week in Toronto, where he saved a match point to escape the German. Zverev, who won the Cincy title in 2021, awaits Toronto champion and fifth seed Ben Shelton<\/a> or 22nd seed Jiri Lehecka<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cincinnati Alcaraz plays ‘best match’ yet in Cincy, reaches QFs Spaniard, who next plays Rublev, is seeking his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81829,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[99,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-81828","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tennis","8":"tag-sports","9":"tag-tennis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n