'Out of this world' – Best shots from De Minaur's win over Fils
Watch the best shots as Alex de Minaur beats Arthur Fils to reach this year’s men’s singles quarter-finals.
Watch the best shots as Alex de Minaur beats Arthur Fils to reach this year’s men’s singles quarter-finals.
Lorenzo Musetti is a Grand Slam quarter-finalist.
The Italian reached the last eight at a major for the first time on Monday at Wimbledon, where he ended the run of French lucky loser Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard with a 4-6, 6-3, 6-3, 6-2 victory.
Mpetshi Perricard was celebrating his 21st birthday and entered the match high in confidence. The big-serving Frenchman defeated Sebastian Korda, Yoshihito Nishioka and Emil Ruusuvuori en route to his first fourth-round appearance at a major, hitting 105 aces across his first three matches.
The Lyon champion was unable to fire at his best level against Musetti in the pair’s first Lexus ATP Head2Head meeting. The 25th seed broke Mpetshi Perricard’s serve five times and was the more consistent in the baseline exchanges, committing just eight unforced errors compared to 42 from his opponent.
“It is tough for me to get emotional but today I think I will,” Musetti said. “I have been dreaming about this moment since I was a kid. I always had a really beautiful family who always supported me in chasing my dream.”
Lorenzo Loving London 💚@Lorenzo1Musetti opens the day with a 4-6 6-3 6-3 6-2 victory over Mpetshi Perricard!<a href=”https://twitter.com/Wimbledon?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>@Wimbledon | <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/Wimbledon?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#Wimbledon pic.twitter.com/DMfEWls9l1
— ATP Tour (@atptour) July 8, 2024
With his two-hour, five-minute win on No. 2 Court, Musetti joined World No. 1 Jannik Sinner in the quarter-finals. It is the first time in history that multiple Italian men have reached the last eight at SW19, with Musetti becoming just the seventh Italian man in history to advance to that stage.
The 22-year-old will next face Alexander Zverev or Taylor Fritz on Wednesday.
The 6’8” Mpetshi Perricard, who hit several serves above 145mph during his run, was aiming to become the first lucky loser to reach a Grand Slam quarter-final. He is up 14 spots to No. 44 in the PIF ATP Live Rankings.
[ATP APP]On No. 1 Court, Australian Alex de Minaur advanced to the quarter-finals at Wimbledon for the first time when he downed #NextGenATP Frenchman Arthur Fils 6-2, 6-4, 4-6, 6-3 in an entertaining clash.
The ninth seed produced an intense performance to outlast Fils, scampering around the court to hang in points before turning the tables with his flat groundstrokes. The 25-year-old recovered from squandering a 4-2 lead in the third set to eventually finish the job in four, avenging his defeat to the 20-year-old in April in Barcelona.
“I will be alright, I will find a way,” De Minaur said when asked if he hurt his ankle when stretching to hit a volley on match point. “I made it a lot harder than I should have but happy to get through. It was a great job mentally to get through it, even though I couldn’t serve out at the end. I just back my return and very happy with that and now onto the next.”
De Minaur has reached consecutive major quarter-finals, having fallen to Alexander Zverev in the last eight at Roland Garros. He will aim to go one step further and reach his first Grand Slam semi-final when he takes on Novak Djokovic or Holger Rune on Wednesday.
Last month, De Minaur won his second grass-court tour-level title in ‘s-Hertogenbosch. With his run to the quarters in west London, he has climbed one spot to sixth in the PIF ATP Live Race To Turin. The Australian is aiming to make his debut at the Nitto ATP Finals in November.
Fils was competing in the fourth round at a major for the first time. The World No. 34 moved past Dominic Stricker and Hubert Hurkacz before he survived in five sets against Roman Safiullin.
[NEWSLETTER FORM]After an epic match-point rally, Lorenzo Musetti beats Giovanni Mpetshi Perricard to reach his first Wimbledon quarter-final.
At the 2001 Wimbledon boys’ singles event, Ken Skupski qualified and advanced to the quarter-finals of the main draw, a run that featured a victory against Robin Soderling. While the 18-year-old Briton was making a name for himself at the grass-court major, his 11-year-old brother, Neal Skupski, was autograph hunting.
“When I wasn’t watching Ken, I would be standing at Aorangi waiting for autographs the whole time, all day,” Neal told ATPTour.com. “[My] best autograph? Roger Federer. I’ve still got the books. I’ve got like a flipbook probably the size of a credential and it’s full of just old tennis players, guys that I didn’t know were going to be very good like Roger Federer, Djokovic. I’ve gotten Nadal. And then I’ve got some of the greats like Lleyton Hewitt. I’ve got Stan Smith in there, McEnroe, Navratilova. So it was time well spent out at Aorangi.”
Now Neal is one of the players kids seek out for autographs. In 2021 and 2022, two decades on from his glory days as an autograph hunter, Skupski claimed mixed doubles glory at The All England Club. Last year, he triumphed in men’s doubles alongside Wesley Koolhof.
“I’d hope to think I haven’t changed one bit. Obviously for me, it’s a nice thing to kind of be men’s doubles champion at Wimbledon,” Neal said. “I see my name on the board, which is an amazing thing for the rest of my life. But anybody that knows me, family, friends, nothing’s changed. I’m still normal Neal.”
Skupski never competed in the juniors at Wimbledon like his older brother. But the venue is still where Neal’s love of the sport came to life.
“He seemed to just go off on his own and just take a pen in his hand and his autograph book, and he’d be so proud to come back when he’d got names that you look at the name on the piece of paper, and you wouldn’t have a clue who it was,” Ken recalled. “But he’d seemed to know whether it was Lindsay Davenport, or Hingis, or all these different players. For both of us, we both had an upbringing playing a lot of club doubles. So he was more than happy to get some of the autographs of players that the average kid that would go and get autographs wouldn’t potentially ask for but he’d be looking for the Bryan brothers, Bhupathi, Knowles, Nestor, all the top guys at the time.”
[ATP APP]Neither Skupski was a world-beating prospect. Ken played the Wimbledon main draw once, but had to qualify to do so. They both played college tennis at Louisiana State University and went on to enjoy great success as professionals.
Ken, who is now retired, climbed as high as No. 44 in the PIF ATP Doubles Rankings and claimed seven ATP Tour titles, including three with Neal.
The younger Skupski brother has reached World No. 1 and earned 17 tour-level titles. He is partnering Michael Venus, another former LSU competitor, this fortnight at Wimbledon in an attempt to claim more glory.
“Our parents have both given us an opportunity to sort of go far in this life of tennis and I think we’ve done a pretty good job of doing something about it and making the most of it,” Ken said. “But overall I can’t say how proud I am as a big brother of all the things he’s achieved and the part that I’ve played in nurturing him to give him the best opportunity because I think he’s gone above and beyond what I expected of him. But now he’s here and he’s doing what he’s doing and I still believe that there’s more in him.”
Ken today serves as Neal’s coach. The older brother admitted that he was not always expecting Neal to enjoy quite as much success as he has.
“I was very lucky to play with him and I cherish that greatly,” Ken said. “But to turn himself into the champion that he is… He’s gone above and beyond what everybody I think expects of him. And if he walked away from the game, now, I think everybody would be super proud. But he is super determined, he is super disciplined, he is as good a professional as he can be to give himself the best chance of being successful.”
According to Neal, it is “a bit strange” that he is not defending his title with Koolhof. But he is as eager as ever to earn more hardware. Skupski and Venus, who have already won titles this grass-court season at Queen’s Club and Eastbourne, are into the third round at SW19.
“I’m still as motivated as last year to try and go well. I’ve known Mike since the college times at LSU. We were teammates. He was a senior, I was a freshman. We played my first year together, we got to I think number two or three in the country in the NCAAs. So that’s where it all started back then down in Baton Rouge, and we’ve stayed good friends ever since,” Neal said. “That’s probably the reason why it’s been so smooth. As a tandem, we played once before in Washington made the final in the 500, but we haven’t played since. It’s never really come together.
“In the past, maybe we’ve wanted to play together, but it just hasn’t worked out because of the partners that we’ve had. But really enjoyed playing on the grass with Mike. We didn’t do so well in Stuttgart, we lost first round. But we went on to win Queen’s and Eastbourne. Let’s see what happens here, take it one match at a time. Looking forward to the rest of our time together.”
[NEWSLETTER FORM]Frenchman Arthur Fils talks BBC Sport through his love for the show Top Boy and his taste in music at Wimbledon.
Britain’s Emma Raducanu says a string of encouraging performances at Wimbledon have made her “hungry” to continue moving up the rankings.
Emma Raducanu is out of Wimbledon after being hampered by a back injury in the deciding set of her fourth-round match against Lulu Sun.
Christopher Eubanks and Evan King headlined a day of doubles upsets Sunday at Wimbledon, where they ousted sixth seeds Santiago Gonzalez and Edouard Roger-Vasselin 6-3, 7-6(3) to reach the third round.
Alternates Eubanks and King played their first tour-level event as a team at Roland Garros, where they advanced to the second round. They will next face ninth seeds Neal Skupski and Michael Venus, who clawed past Rinky Hijikata and John Peers 6-4, 6-7(5), 6-4. Skupski won the title last year with Wesley Koolhof.
Koolhof will not lift the trophy two years in a row. Home wild cards Charles Broom and Arthur Fery ousted seventh seeds Koolhof and Nikola Mektic 7-6(4), 7-6(5).
[ATP APP]There was another upset when Andreas Mies and John-Patrick Smith upset third seeds Rajeev Ram and Joe Salisbury 4-6, 6-3, 6-2.
Smith had made the second round at The Championships six times, but never advanced further. Now the Australian and partner Mies will play 15th seeds Max Purcell and Jordan Thompson.
“It’s good to actually finally break that hump there and make it another round deeper,” Smith said. “Obviously a great quality team, two guys who are multiple Slam champions and it doesn’t get any easier in the next one with Aussie boys, who obviously play really well on the grass.”
In other action 11th seeds Maximo Gonzalez and Andres Molteni eliminated Tomas Machac and Zhang Zhizhen 7-6(4), 6-4 and Mackenzie McDonald and Ben Shelton completed a 6-2, 6-7(3), 6-4 victory against Flavio Cobolli and Lorenzo Sonego.
[NEWSLETTER FORM]Coco Gauff becomes the latest high-profile seed to suffer a shock exit in the women’s singles at Wimbledon, while Jasmine Paolini goes through.
Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz earned victory against Frenchman Ugo Humbert on Sunday at Wimbledon. In two days, Spain will face France in the semi-finals at the European Championships in Germany.
Alcaraz watched Spain’s quarter-final victory against Germany in the locker room following his win against Frances Tiafoe on Friday and the 21-year-old is excited to give his country his full backing from west London once again.
“I have a really good relationship with a few players in the team. In particular, Alvaro Morata. He’s a really good friend,” said Alcaraz, who is scheduled to face Tommy Paul or Roberto Bautista Agut on Tuesday at SW19. “I support them. [The Euros] is every four years, so right now it’s time to support them, as I know they support me when I’m playing matches or I’m playing tournaments. It’s my turn.
“Hopefully on Tuesday we are not going to play at the same time. But let’s see. Hopefully I will be able to see a little bit from the match.”
On court against Humbert, Alcaraz produced moments of magic and he will be hoping Spain produces similarly against France. On set point in the second set, the third seed lost his footing mid-way through the point, but somehow regained control to scamper around the court and clinch the set.
Smiling, Alcaraz recalled playing a similar point against Jannik Sinner en route to the title at the US Open in 2022.
“The last time I remember that I fell down and recovered and won the point at the end was against Sinner at the US Open. I remember that I fell down, recovered and made a passing shot. That is the last time I remember that I got a point like this one,” Alcaraz said.
“As I said on the court, that’s myself fighting for every ball. I think that I can reach every ball. It doesn’t matter the shot, the opponent hit or the place that I’m on the court. I just think that I’m going to get it, I’m going to hit another good shot or a passing shot, believing that I’m going to get the point.”
[ATP APP]Alcaraz, who holds a 15-2 record at Wimbledon and is chasing his fourth major title, has played his past two matches at The Championships under the Centre Court roof due to rain in west London.
Alcaraz is pleased with how he has coped with the change of conditions.
“I’m not used to playing indoors, I’m not going to lie. But I don’t consider myself a bad player indoors. I just think that are a lot of players better than me,” Alcaraz said. “I would prefer to play outdoors. But if the weather is OK and the suns out. Not if it is windy. But if we have to play outdoors or indoors, I have to adapt my game with the conditions that it is.”
[NEWSLETTER FORM]