Sinner avenges Shanghai defeat to Shelton; Tsitsipas rants at umpire

Jannik Sinner of Italy plays a backhand return against Ben Shelton of the United States during the men’s singles fourth round match at the Qizhong Forest Sports City Tennis Center, in Shanghai

Jannik Sinner avenged his defeat to Ben Shelton in the fourth round of last year’s Shanghai Masters with a 6-4, 7-6 (1) to spoil the 22-year-old American’s birthday yesterday.

Like last year, the duel again featured some incredible shot-making and serving dominance but this time the 23-year old Italian prevailed to improve his record against Shelton to 4-1.

“Happy how I handled this situation, it’s obviously a position where I have been last year, and where I am right now, it’s different, so I’m happy to be in the position where I am,” Sinner said.

Sinner’s break in the ninth game was all that separated the duo in the opening set. Both players then dominated on their own serve through the second before the Italian sped away in the tiebreak and won the last seven points of the match to advance to his seventh ATP Masters 1000 quarterfinal of the year.

He will play fifth-ranked Daniil Medvedev, who earlier beat long-time rival Stefanos Tsitsipas 7-6 (3), 6-3, in a match where the Greek player launched into a minutes-long rant against the chair umpire Fergus Murphy over a time violation call and initially refused to continue playing.

“You have never played tennis in your life. You have no clue about tennis, it seems like,” Tsitsipas said to Murphy. “Definitely you’ve had no career. You probably played serve-and-volley every single time.

“Anyways, tennis is a physical sport and we need some time over there. You have to show some compassion because you aren’t showing any.

“It’s a physical sport. We are not throwing darts out here, okay?

“If it’s going to be unfair, I need to talk to the supervisor. You seem like you have no idea what you’re doing,” Tsitsipas continued as the crowd began to slow clap.

In a similar incident the day prior, Frances Tiafoe cursed repeatedly at a chair umpire after losing his third round match and later apologized.

Second-ranked Carlos Alcaraz, who won the China Open in a thriller against Sinner last week, made it 12 consecutive wins with a testing 6-4, 7-5 victory over French veteran Gael Monfils to advance to the quarterfinals.

Alcaraz needed all his shot-making abilities to outmaneuvre the 38-year-old Monfils, with the 21-year-old Spaniard making 22 winners and taking a break in each set to clinch the match in 87 minutes.

The French Open and Wimbledon champion will play Tomas Machac in the quarterfinals.

Wuhan Open

Second-ranked Aryna Sabalenka maintained her undefeated record at the Wuhan Open, opening her campaign with a 6-4, 6-4 win over 37th-ranked Katerina Siniakova in a second-round match yesterday.

Two-time defending champion Sabalenka, who received a bye in the first round with the other top eight seeds, broke her Czech opponent twice in each set — as well as surrendering one of her own service games — as she clinched her latest win in 1 hour and 34 minutes of play.

In the third round, the 26-year-old Belarussian will play Yulia Putintseva of Kazakhstan, who ended Paris Olympics silver medalist Donna Vekic’s tournament with 6-4, 3-6, 6-4 victory.

The reigning U.S. Open champion is now up to 13-0 in Wuhan after winning the title on her first appearance in 2018 and defending her crown in 2019 before the tournament took its five-year hiatus from the calendar due to COVID-19 travel restrictions and a WTA boycott of China.

“I missed Wuhan a lot,” Sabalenka said. “I just have really good memories of winning, two times, the title here. Just Wuhan brings me a lot of great memories, good vibes.” MDT/AP