Alcaraz after an exciting match against Struff in the Madrid quarter-finals

Carlos Alcaraz reached the quarter-finals of the Tennis Masters 1000 tournament in Madrid after a thrilling match. The winner of the last two editions defeated German Jan-Lennard Struff 6:3,6:7(5), 7:6(4) on Tuesday after nearly three hours of play.

The Russian Andre Roblio, seeded seventh, is now waiting for the Spaniard, seeded second. Top seed Jannik Sinner also struggled in her 5:7.6:3.6:3 win over Karen Chachanov (RUS).

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Struff delivers the fight

After two confident wins before, Alcaraz will have to fight hard in his third appearance after suffering an elbow injury. This will be in a new version of the Madrid final in 2023, which also lasted for three groups.

This time it was a closer affair as Struff won the second set tiebreaker 7-5. After that, the German was hopelessly trailing at 3:5 and 0:40, but after defending four match points he was able to take a break and finally return to the tie-break. There the 34-year-old turned the score 0:3 into 4:3, but that was his last point of the match.

Alcaraz can no longer miss match point number five. The 20-year-old celebrates his 14th successive win in Madrid; The world number three defeated Struff in the fourth confrontation for the third time in a row.

Easy game for Rublev

Alcaraz said in his first reaction on the field: “It was difficult, I suffered from my emotions. I am really happy that I showed my mentality in the end and achieved the victory.” His quarter-final opponent Roblo was much less challenging and beat Dutchman Talon Greixboer 6:2, 6:4.

Sinner even had to come from behind against Chachanov, but he was then the better player and secured a place in the last eight for the first time in Madrid. South Tyrolean is the only player on Tour to have reached the quarterfinals of all Masters 1000 events this season.

His opponent has just been identified there. While Daniil Medvedev (RUS-3) lived up to his role as favorite, Alexander Zverev (GER-4) was eliminated. The Olympic champion had to bow somewhat surprisingly to Argentine Francisco Cerundolo with a time of 3:6.4:6.