The second-seeded Stan Wawrinka overpowered Kevin Anderson of South Africa, 6-1, 6-3, in a match that wrapped up in one hour, 13 minutes on Friday afternoon to become the first man through to the semifinal round at the Rogers Cup in Toronto.
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After battling hard to claim the lead, Nishikori was then able to cruise through set two as his rival collapsed in surprising fashion – a truly horrendous miss at the net late on summing up Wawrinka’s display.
“It’s going to be interesting”. In Miami, he kind of dominated the game.
“I know I have to be a little bit more aggressive to beat him”, Nishikori said of Wawrinka. In short, this is a pretty good field for a 250 level tournament, especially given that these players are all missing the Olympics in order to play.
“Gael has been in terrific touch, winning Washington last week”.
Give me Djokovic to win yet another title. Of course, with no rankings points at stake, the threat of the Zika virus keeping some athletes from playing in Rio, and the tales about Rio not being very well prepared, many of these players are probably quite pleased that they skipped the Olympics for Atlanta.
Wawrinka led 5-2 in the opener, but failed to press home his advantage and eventually lost a tie-break after failing to take four set points.
With the second set tied at 5-5 and the score at deuce, Djokovic won a pair of rallies to earn the decisive break.
It was the first time in five years that the double Grand Slam champion Swiss had reached the last eight in Canada; he went out in an opening match a year ago to Nick Kyrgios and got to the third round in 2014. But that slowly slipped away as his unforced errors mounted.
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“It’s one of the best match of the year I play, I think, in general”, Wawrinka said.
