A late break gave Alejandro Davidovich Fokina "a shot of tequila" in Toronto win over Casper Ruud
The Spaniard knocked out the No. 3 seed in a decisive tie-break to set a quarterfinal with Mackenzie McDonald Thursday.
Alejandro Davidovich Fokina and Mackenzie McDonald will meet in an unlikely quarterfinal at the National Bank Open after their respective victories Thursday.
Davidovich Fokina upended third seed Casper Ruud, 7-6 (4), 4-6, 7-6 (4), in three hours and six minutes. The Norwegian led 5-3, 0-30 but couldn’t break and subsequently dropped serve with the match on his racquet in the following game. A 0-30 lead at 5-5 also went to waste, before Davidovich Fokina rode out an insurmountable 5-1 lead in the decisive tie-break.
“It was a very close match. In the beginning of the third set, I started very bad. I was struggling a little bit. The key of today was don’t give up. Be every point, push yourself to your limit,” Davidovich Fokina told Prakash Amritraj on Tennis Channel afterwards.
“It’s never easy to close the match with the serve. I was returning everything. When I break at 5-4, that give me like a shot of tequila.”
The Spaniard celebrated his first Top 10 win on a hard court and second this season, having defeated Holger Rune in the third round of the Madrid Open – also in a final-set tiebreaker. With his run thus far, Fokina has moved into US Open seeding territory. The 24-year-old is looking to end a winless streak in quarterfinals, having dropped all five he’s contested this season.
For a place in the last four, Davidovich Fokina will take on McDonald for the second time. He won their lone previous meeting in three sets at 2021 Stockholm.
McDonald ended home hopes by eliminating Milos Raonic, 6-3, 6-3. The American broke the former Wimbledon finalist three times and saved both break points he faced to seal the 69-minute win.
“I think the game plan’s pretty simple against Milos. He can take the racquet out of your hand, or I was making him play a lot of balls today,” he shared with Amritraj. “I was just really locked in on the return, for sure.”
Ranked No. 59, McDonald is through to his first Masters 1000 quarterfinal. He is now 24-19 on the season, following earlier wins this week over Aslan Karatsev and world No. 7 Andrey Rublev.