Montreal, Aug 6: Taylor Fritz was narrowly denied another serving shutout in Toronto Tuesday night but got the result that mattered most – victory over 2024 finalist Andrey Rublev – to advance to the semi-finals of the National Bank Open Presented by Rogers.Holding match point at 5-4 in the second set after a serving masterclass, Fritz seemed destined to claim his 42nd consecutive hold before an against-the-script lapse that saw Rublev convert his fourth break point of the game to level the match and soon after force a tie-break.
But with the confidence of having won 18 of his previous 21 matches, Fritz steadied to claim a 6-3, 7-6(4) win, his 20th hard-court victory of the season.
That whole game was so shaky for me,” a reflective Fritz said of failing to serve out the match. “It’s weird because he was holding easy, I was holding easy. It felt so like calm and chill and all of a sudden I’m serving to be in the semis, the pressure of the game came out of nowhere.
“There’s no way to sugarcoat it, it was a tight game. My brain kind of turned off. The only thing you can do is come back and win the set. I would be a lot more upset about what happened in the game if I lose the match. Winning makes it feel not as bad.”
After saving all 10 break points faced against Gabriel Diallo and Jiri Lehecka in the third and fourth rounds, Fritz again dominated on serve, firing nine aces in the breezy 31-minute opening set and 20 for the match, tying his three-set aces record. He won 79 per cent of first serves and 64 per cent of second serves.
In a clinical match dominated by serve and devoid of many entertaining rallies, Rublev also impressed on serve save for being broken to love in the second game of the match and dropping his only other break point in his final service game of the match.
Fritz, who becomes the third player this season to reach 20 hard-court wins, according to the Infosys ATP Win/Loss index, will play countryman Ben Shelton, who snapped recent Washington champion Alex de Minaur’s seven-match winning streak with a 6-3, 6-4 win.
Rublev, who was two points from defeat against Alejandro Davidovich Fokina in the fourth round, fell to Alexei Popyrin in last year’s final in Montreal.