Medvedev survives Tien scare; Sabalenka, Gauff move ahead

Daniil Medvedev on Wednesday got his revenge against US teenager Learner Tien, beating him in a nail-biter 7-6 (8/6), 6-7 (1/7), 6-4 to proceed to the Shanghai Masters quarter-finals.

There he will meet world number seven Alex de Minaur, who cruised past Portugal’s Nuno Borges 7-5, 6-2 earlier in the day.

Victory in Shanghai comes just over a week after the 36th-ranked Tien took the Russian out of the China Open semi-finals in Beijing.

“He’s an unbelievable tennis player,” Medvedev said of the 19-year-old. “Outside of the big three, he may be the toughest opponent I’ve ever faced.”

Medvedev broke first in the ninth game, but Tien returned the favour immediately.

The last two games of the first set saw the two players locked in an epic back-and-forth, their prolonged rallies thrilling the crowd.

Both faced breakpoint but managed to hold, with Medvedev smashing a looping lob from Tien to send them to a gripping tiebreak.

Medvedev broke early in the second set, but Tien was again unphased -- breaking back in the fifth and then seventh games, before the former world number one levelled in the tenth.

Medvedev began limping just before the second-set tiebreak and spoke briefly with a medic before hobbling back onto court.

Tien went 3-0 up as the Russian, ten years his senior, tried to stretch out on court, becoming increasingly irate as the match was pushed to a decider.

But a scrappy third set -- full of double-faults from both players -- was settled when Medvedev broke in the ninth game with a backhand.

After Novak Djokovic, the Australian is the highest ranked player left standing after a string of high-profile exits.

De Minaur needed five break points in the 11th game against Borges in the first set, converting the last with a backhand for a decisive advantage.

He carried the momentum into the second set, breaking in the first and third games.

But he remained cautious about his title chances. Another top-10 player fell on Wednesday as Italy’s Lorenzo Musetti lost to Canada’s Felix Auger-Aliassime 6-4, 6-2.

Thirteenth-ranked Auger-Aliassime looked sharp throughout, breaking in the fifth game.

He went on to dominate the second set, breaking Musetti, the world number nine, in the fifth and seventh games.

He will next meet France’s Arthur Rinderknech, who reached his first Masters 1000 quarter-final after beating Czech Jiri Lehecka 6-3, 7-6 (7/5).

Rinderknech’s cousin Valentin Vacherot made it to the last eight on Tuesday, and will face Denmark’s Holger Rune for a place in the semi-finals.

Meanwhile, defending champion Aryna Sabalenka battled hard on Wednesday to keep her unbeaten record in Wuhan intact, having to come from behind to beat Slovakia’s Rebecca Sramkova 4-6, 6-3, 6-1.

The world number one started slowly in her first match since she clinched a fourth Grand Slam title at the US Open last month.

But the Belarusian found her power game in the final set to reach the Wuhan Open last 16, where she will face the 16th-seeded Russian Liudmila Samsonova.

Sabalenka is chasing a fourth consecutive crown in Wuhan where she has a perfect 18-0 win-loss record.

Sramkova quickly took a 3-1 lead and served out to take the opening set in 35 minutes.

Sabalenka shook off the rust in the second and then swept through the decider to win in just under two hours. The other four-time major champion in action on Wednesday, Naomi Osaka, slumped to a 7-6 (7/2), 6-3 defeat to last week’s Beijing runner-up Linda Noskova.

Japan’s Osaka, the 11th seed, dropped just three points behind her first serve but could not convert any of her four break point opportunities during the 90-minute showdown.

Third seed Coco Gauff, a semi-finalist in Wuhan last year, booked her place in the last 16 with a smooth 6-1, 6-0 performance against Japanese qualifier Moyuka Uchijima.

Gauff was flawless throughout a 51-minute victory that was her 18th on Chinese soil since 2023, the most at WTA level by any player in China during that period. Gauff will square off with Chinese wildcard Zhang Shuai for a place in the quarter-finals.

In contrast, world number six Jessica Pegula survived a “wild ride”, needing seven match points and almost three hours to overcome fellow American Hailey Baptiste 6-4, 4-6, 7-6 (8/6).

Pegula served for the match twice, at 5-2 and 5-4 in the third set, but Baptiste dug deep to save five match points and took four games in a row for a 6-5 advantage.

Agencies