Nikoloz Basilashvili caused the first major upset at the Garanti Koza Sofia Open, shocking top seed Dominic Thiem 6-4, 6-4 to reach the quarter-finals on Thursday.

The Georgian player required just a single break of serve in each set. Basilashvili landed 77 per cent of his first serves and saved all three break points against him to wrap up the win in one hour and 18 minutes.

“I think I played really well on the important points and kept focus all the way through the match today,” said Basilashvili. “This is very special and one of the best wins of my career, if not the best one. It will give me a lot of confidence for the upcoming matches.”

Basilashvili picks up his second victory over a Top 10 player, having defeated Tomas Berdych this past October in Vienna. Last July, he became the first Georgian to reach an ATP World Tour final in Kitzbuhel (l. Lorenzi).

Next up for him is eighth seed Martin Klizan, who came alive in the latter stages of his second-round match with qualifier Daniel Brands to prevail 7-6(3), 6-2. Klizan racked up 12 break points to keep the German on defense throughout the contest.

Fifth seed Gilles Muller continued his outstanding season with a 6-3, 7-5 victory over Mikhail Youzhny. Muller ran through the final three games of the match to advance into the last eight, where he’ll play fourth seed and defending champion Roberto Bautista Agut. The Spaniard leads his FedEx ATP Head2Head with Muller 4-1, including a win in the 2016 Sofia semi-finals.

Ninth seed Viktor Troicki scraped through a tight 2-6, 6-4, 7-6(3) match over Robin Haase. Last year’s finalist in Sofia now awaits the winner between third seed Grigor Dimitrov and former Top 15 player Jerzy Janowicz. 

Alexander Zverev was severely tested in a 7-5, 3-6, 6-4 triumph over Aljaz Bedene before booking his quarter-final place at the Open Sud de France on Thursday.

The #NextGenATP teenager fired 10 aces, alongside 10 double faults, and needed two hours en route to victory in his first encounter against the Brit. Zverev won 75 per cent of points on first serve and saved 11/15 break chances.

The top-ranked German reached the semi-finals last year in Montpellier on his main draw debut. To replicate that run the World No. 21 will need to beat Jeremy Chardy in the final eight. The Frenchman was victorious in their only previous meeting back in Kuala Lumpur in 2015.

Reigning champion Richard Gasquet is safely through to the quarter-finals, having defeated World No. 50 Malek Jaziri 7-5, 6-2. Gasquet, on a nine-match winning streak in Montpellier, will play qualifier Kenny De Schepper in the next round.

Another #NextGenATP star Daniil Medvedev progressed at the Open Sud de France. The 20 year old, playing at a career-high ranking of No. 63 this week, converted all four break points to edge past eighth seed Fernando Verdasco 6-3, 6-3.

The towering Russian has earned a match against Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, who has reached his third ATP World Tour quarter-final in as many tournaments. The No.2 Frenchman, making his first appearance in Montpellier since 2010, dispatched countryman Pierre-Hugues Herbert 6-1, 6-2 without facing a break point in just 44 minutes.

2013 finalist Benoit Paire toppled fifth seed Feliciano Lopez 6-4, 7-6(5) to set a contest with Marin Cilic’s conqueror Dustin Brown.

Rafael Nadal fans must be counting down the days.

With Nadal’s left wrist looking healthy – see 2017 Australian Open – and the Spaniard back in fighting form, his legion of supporters surely cannot wait until the left-hander slides on red dirt again.

The 30 year old has taken multiple tour-level titles on all surfaces since turning pro in 2001, but nowhere has his game been as dominant as it has been on clay. As the European clay-court season approaches, it’s worth reminding ourselves of Nadal’s most impressive numbers, found in the FedEx ATP Performance Zone.

More: View Best Career Clay-Court Records In FedEx ATP Performance Zone

Nadal has won almost 92 per cent of the matches he’s played on clay, a win-loss record of 365-34, tops in the Open Era. Other players have won more matches, including Spaniard Manuel Orantes (501) and Austrian Thomas Muster (422), but Nadal owns the best winning percentage on clay.

The Mallorca native has also captured 49 clay-court tour-level titles, tying him with Argentine Guillermo Vilas for the most clay-court crowns in the Open Era. Nadal could break that record as soon as April when he plays at the Monte-Carlo Rolex Masters, an ATP World Tour Masters 1000 event, and goes for his 10^th Monte-Carlo crown.

That would mark the first event Nadal has won 10 times. He’s also won Roland Garros and the Barcelona Open Banco Sabadell nine times.

“It has been a very important week for me… The victory here confirms that I am better and I am very happy, no? It’s a very, very emotional week for me, very important event,” Nadal said last April after winning his ninth Monte-Carlo title. “Probably Monte-Carlo is one of the most important places in my career without any doubt. Win again here after three years is something so special for me. So very happy for that.”

No other active players have come close to achieving Nadal’s mastery on clay, but Swede Bjorn Borg nears Nadal in the all-time ranks in the FedEx ATP Performance Zone. Borg finished his career with 30 tour-level titles and a winning percentage of 86. The right-hander went 251-41 on clay.

American Ivan Lendl, who now coaches one of Nadal’s rivals, Andy Murray, ranks third on the all-time list in terms of winning percentage. Lendl won 81 per cent of his clay-court battles, 327-76. The 6’2” right-hander secured 28 tour-level titles on clay, more than a quarter of his career total, 94.

The only active player with a winning percentage worthy of the Top 10 in the FedEx ATP Performance Zone is Novak Djokovic. The Serbian boasts a 176-43 record on clay, giving him a winning percentage of 80, just behind Lendl on the all-time list.

Djokovic trails Nadal in clay-court titles by a wide margin, though. The right-hander has won 13 career clay-court crowns. He will try to repeat as Roland Garros champion in June.

“I’m very proud, very thrilled, obviously,” Djokovic said after winning the Roland Garros title last year. “It’s hard for me to reflect on what has happened before and what’s going to happen after. I’m just so overwhelmed with having this trophy next to me that I’m just trying to enjoy this moment.”

I am at a crossroads in my career, having fulfilled my original goals in tennis, while remaining short of the accomplishments of my idols … and I find myself learning to process versions of FOMO (fear of missing out) in two separate directions.

Sometimes I wonder if, by focusing on my goal, am I letting the world pass me by? Or is achieving my goal, through sheer persistence and drive, worth the sacrifices I have to make?

My biggest phobia at this point in my life is the possibility that someday I’ll look back and feel like I didn’t realise my full potential as a player. That I didn’t get to No. 1. That I didn’t win the multiple Slams.

That I missed out.

You know the ultimate answer to that question, but I don’t.

… All these years from now, I hope you haven’t forgotten how much you embraced the climb — from being unranked, to cracking the Top 50, to now.

Even if you never reached No. 1, I have faith that you continued to approach everything as meticulously as you do right now. No matter what you ended up doing after tennis, I hope you found something that channelled your passion and competitive spirit. There’s a quote from Steve Jobs, who I’ve been reading a lot about lately, that I hope you kept with you: “If today were the last day of my life,” he said, “would I want to do what I am about to do today? And whenever the answer has been no for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”

Remember how you dreamt of taking internships across all kinds of industries when you retired? I hope you explored that. I hope you went back to school, in an effort to try and refine all of those deep thoughts you were having all the time — if only so they were less messy. I hope you kept exploring: You grew up in a house where there wasn’t a ton of art and music, but in the last 18 months or so, those two fields have really started to inspire you. Spending time with Jeff Elrod in his studio in New York, and listening to John’s wife, the musician Patty Smyth, were two of the best things you did in the past year.

… Right now, you are No. 4. I wonder how, in your old age, that makes you feel. I wonder what’s going to happen in the future. I wonder if I’ll climb the last three steps to No. 1. There’s a lot I can’t control. I guess that’s why I’m so meticulous about the things I can — my work ethic, my persistence, my energy.

I don’t know what is going to happen next. I just hope that when you read this, you can tell yourself, “I took every step that I thought was right, in the moment.”

If you can say that, you’ll be content, Milos.

Read The Rest Of Raonic’s Article In The Player’s Tribune

Top-ranked Brazilian Thomaz Bellucci booked an all-South American quarter-final on Wednesday after he edged past Janko Tipsarevic at the Ecuador Open. The Brazilian fourth seed, a runner-up in Quito last season, saw off the Serbian wild card 7-6(8), 7-6(2) and will next face Argentine Renzo Olivo.

Eighth-seeded Olivo ground out a 7-6(3), 2-6, 6-3 second-round victory over Colombia’s Santiago Giraldo to book his second straight Quito quarter-final berth. Giraldo was bidding to reach his first ATP World Tour quarter-final since Los Cabos in August last year.

In the final first-round clash, two-time defending champion Victor Estrella Burgos won his 11^th straight match in the Ecuadorian capital with a 3-6, 6-2, 6-4 win over Slovakian Andrej Martin. The win secures a second-round meeting with top seed Ivo Karlovic on Thursday.

Dustin Brown added another Top 10 win to his growing tally of upsets on the ATP World Tour. The 32-year-old German toppled top seed Marin Cilic 6-4, 6-4 on Wednesday at the Open Sud de France in Montpellier.

The hard-serving Brown struck eight aces and lost only three first-serve points (22/25) in the hour-long contest. He never faced a break point.

Brown had been 3-11 lifetime against Top 10 players but his trio of victories had come on grass (Nadal, 2014 Halle, 2015 Wimbledon) and clay courts (Isner, 2014 Houston). Brown had been defeated – 0-9 – by Top 10 players on hard courts.

Cilic suffered an opening loss in Montpellier for the second consecutive year. He lost to #NextGenATP star Alexander Zverev last year. The 28-year-old Croatian is now 1-3 on the season, having lost his Chennai opener and in the second round of the Australian Open last month.

Alexander Zverev’s older brother, Mischa Zverev, couldn’t reproduce the tennis that saw him reach a Grand Slam quarter-final for the first time last month in Melbourne. The sixth-seeded Zverev fell to French qualifier Kenny De Schepper 6-4, 6-3. In the battle of 35 year olds, Spaniard Feliciano Lopez prevailed against Frenchman Julien Benneteau, blasting 16 aces to win 6-3, 4-6, 7-6(0) in just over two hours. Lopez saved a match point down 30/40, 4-5 in the third set.