De Minaur/Tiafoe Take Out Washington Top Seeds In Team Debut

Playing together for the first time, Top 30 singles stars Alex de Minaur and Frances Tiafoe scored a big doubles upset on Tuesday at the Citi Open.

The Australian-American pair knocked off top seeds Rajeev Ram and Horacio Zeballos 6-4, 1-6, 10-2 to advance to the quarter-finals at the Washington ATP 500 event. With the defeat, Ram loses out on an opportunity to overtake his full-time partner Joe Salisbury at No. 1 in the Pepperstone ATP Doubles Rankings.

De Minaur/Tiafoe struck late in the opening set but quickly lost the second after failing to convert from 15/40 at 0-2 down on return. But they used runs of four and five straight points to dominate the Match Tie-break.

The new-look pair advances to face Mackenzie McDonald and Botic van de Zandschulp, who advanced past Ilya Ivashka and Andrey Rublev 6-4, 6-7(5), 10-8 on Monday.

Colombians Juan Sebastian Cabal and Robert Farah also advanced via Match Tie-break on Tuesday evening, edging second seeds Wesley Koolhof and Neal Skupski  6-4, 3-6, 10-8 by winning the final four points of the contest.

In earlier Tuesday doubles action, Rohan Bopanna and Matwe Middelkoop defeated Denis Kudla and Denis Shapovalov 6-4, 6-4, while Daniel Evans and John Peers downed Hubert Hurkacz and Tommy Paul 7-6(7), 6-4.