Carreno Busta Snaps Streak In Estoril

May032017

Spaniard going for his first clay-court crown

Top seed Pablo Carreno Busta earned his first win against countryman Tommy Robredo, moving into the Millennium Estoril Open quarter-finals with a 7-6(5), 7-5 victory on Wednesday.

The 25-year-old Carreno Busta hadn’t won a set and was 0-3 against the 35-year-old Robredo during their FedEx ATP Head2Head series. But all three of their past match-ups took place in 2014, and Carreno Busta has leaped in the Emirates ATP Rankings since their most recent contest, a quarter-final at Umag in 2014.

At the time, Carreno Busta was ranked No. 57 and hadn’t reached an ATP World Tour final. Nearly three years later, though, the 6’2” Spaniard is ranked No. 21, has reached five finals and won two ATP World Tour titles (Moscow 2016; Winston-Salem 2016).

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Carreno Busta, an Estoril semi-finalist in 2015 and a finalist in 2016, will face another veteran countryman in the last eight: defending champion Nicolas Almagro, who dropped only two points on his first serve (20/22) to beat Portugal’s Gastao Elias 6-1, 6-2. Almagro improves to 9-1 in Estoril.

Second seed Richard Gasquet won his first tour-level match since February, advancing to the quarter-finals with a 6-1, 6-4 victory against Argentine Carlos Berlocq. Gasquet, the 2015 Estoril champion, underwent appendicitis surgery in March and lost in his return last week at the Barcelona Open Banc Sabadell.

The Frenchman improved to 5-0 against Berlocq in their FedEx ATP Head2Head series. The 30-year-old Gasquet will next meet South African Kevin Anderson, who outlasted Portuguese qualifier Joao Domingues 5-7, 6-3, 7-5 in two hours and 24 minutes.

Fifth seed Juan Martin del Potro received some sad news and had to withdraw from the tournament to head back to Argentina. “I received the news of the death of my grandfather, and I need to go to my family to be with them during this hard time and say goodbye with them. Thank you Estoril, I will see you soon,” del Potro said in a statement.

.@delpotrojuan .@delpotrojuan is on his way to Argentina after his grandfather passed away today. He wants to stay with his family in this tough moment.

— Jorge Viale (@jorgeviale) May 3, 2017