Australian Alex de Minaur stepped up his bid for a place at the Next Gen ATP Finals on Thursday after a second-round victory at the Shenzhen Open. The 19-year-old Australian recovered from a set and 2-4 down to beat American Mackenzie McDonald 1-6, 7-6(1), 6-0 in two hours and 40 minutes.

“I was watching winners go past me in the first set,” said De Minaur. “He was playing some incredible tennis. I’d experienced that level when I hit with him earlier this week. I knew I had to keep going and try to make the extra ball, then, at some stage, I hoped that his level and intensity would drop so I could turn it around.”

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World No. 80 McDonald won the first five games and broke for a 3-2 advantage in the second set, prior to seventh seed De Minaur working his way back. The Australian needed four set point chances to clinch the second set and, despite the third set scoreline, he saved four break points in the decider to complete his 20th match win of the season (20-17 record).

De Minaur is in fourth position in the ATP Race To Milan for one of seven automatic qualification spots into the Next Gen ATP Finals, to be held from 6-10 November. He has reached two ATP World Tour finals this year, at the Sydney International (l. to Medvedev) and the Citi Open in Washington, D.C. (l. to A. Zverev).

Looking ahead to playing fourth seed Damir Dzumhur on Friday, De Minaur said, “It’s going to be a tough match tomorrow. There will be some extremely long rallies and I intend to put all my effort into the match.”

In Thursday’s first match, which lasted 87 minutes, Dzumhur swept past Indian qualifier Ramkumar Ramanathan 6-4, 6-2.

Do You Know?
Alex de Minaur began the 2018 ATP World Tour season at No. 208 in the ATP Rankings and has since achieved career-high ranking 16 times, peaking at No. 38 on 10 September.

Top seed Fabio Fognini opened his campaign at the Chengdu Open on Thursday by beating Belgian qualifier Ruben Bemelmans 6-4, 7-6(2) in one hour and 35 minutes. The Italian is a winner of three ATP World Tour titles this year — at the Brasil Open in Sao Paulo (d. Jarry), the SkiStar Swedish Open in Bastad (d. Gasquet) and the Abierto de Tenis Mifel presentado por Cinemex (d. Del Potro) — and has a 38-18 match record.

Fognini next faces Matthew Ebden, who is one win away from reaching his third ATP World Tour semi-final of the season (Libema Open, BB&T Atlanta Open) after the sixth-seeded Australian knocked out Matteo Berrettini of Italy 6-3, 3-6, 7-6(3) in just over two hours.

Elsewhere, American Taylor Fritz stepped up his bid for a place at the Next Gen ATP Finals in November by beating Mikhail Kukushkin of Kazakhstan 7-5, 6-1 in 67 minutes. Currently in sixth position in the ATP Race To Milan, the 20-year-old is through to his fourth tour-level semi-final of the year (also the Delray Beach Open, Fayez Sarofim & Co. U.S. Men’s Clay Court Championship and the Open Parc Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Lyon).

Fritz will now play his compatriot, Sam Querrey, who struck 17 aces and didn’t lose a first-service point (30/30) in his 6-1, 6-4 win over third-seeded Georgian Nikoloz Basilashvili in just 54 minutes.

Did You Know?
Fabio Fognini has won only one of his eight ATP World Tour titles on a hard court, at Los Cabos (d. Del Potro) in August 2018. He has also finished as runner-up in hard-court finals at the 2012 and 2017 St. Petersburg Open and at the 2016 VTB Kremlin Cup.

Felix Auger-Aliassime continued to grow in confidence at the Chengdu Open on Wednesday. The 18-year-old #NextGenATP Canadian knocked out last year’s Next Gen ATP Finals champion, second seed Hyeon Chung, 7-6(2), 5-7, 6-4, to make his first ATP World Tour quarter-final.

“It feels nice. It was one of my objectives this year to go maybe deep in an ATP 250 or 500. Now I’m here in the quarter-finals, and the tournament’s not done yet, so it’s a very nice feeling and hopefully I can go far,” Auger-Aliassime said.

He raced out to a 4-1 advantage but could not convert a set point chance at 5-4, with Chung serving at 30/40. The Canadian, however, broke clear from 2/2 in the tie-break to take the first set.

Chung rebounded in the second, though, breaking in the 12th game. But Auger-Aliassime broke right back to start the third and served out the match to love.

“You have to believe in yourself to win these kind of matches, to play against these players,” Auger-Aliassime said. “My plan was… I’m going to play every point, give it everything, and play with my strengths. The keys today were my serve, and I was also able to dictate most of the rallies, and I was very tough mentally… That really paid off.”

The Canadian, who’s the youngest player inside the Top 200 of the ATP Rankings, started the week in 15th position in the ATP Race To Milan. The top seven players in the Race will qualify automatically for the Next Gen ATP Finals, while the eighth spot will be reserved for the winner of an all-Italian qualifier tournament to be held just prior to prestigious 21-and-under event. Auger-Aliassime is 310 points behind seventh-placed Andrey Rublev.

“There are a lot of good players ahead of me. Maybe I’ll get there but I have to start with this week and then we’ll see how it goes for the rest of the year,” Auger-Aliassime said.

He will next meet Aussie Bernard Tomic, who saved one match point to reach his second ATP World Tour quarter-final of the season. Tomic beat fellow qualifier Lloyd Harris of South Africa 7-6(5), 2-6, 7-6(6) in two hours and 12 minutes, saving one match point at 5/6 in the deciding set tie-break. Harris, who beat fifth seed Gael Monfils in the first round, struck 23 aces.

Seventh-seeded Portuguese Joao Sousa saved two match points at 4-5 in the third set of a 6-7(4), 6-4, 7-6(0) comeback win over Vasek Pospisil. Sousa couldn’t convert a set point in the first set at 5-4, with Pospisil serving at 40/30, but battled to extend his FedEx ATP Head2Head record to 4-0 against the Canadian, who had led 5-2 in the decider. Sousa now meets Malek Jaziri, a 6-3, 7-6(5) victor over fourth seed Adrian Mannarino.

Winning at the Nitto ATP Finals often requires players to raise their games to another level. And with the 2018 season finale less than two months away, Infosys ATP Beyond The Numbers investigates which players have best lifted their games during the most recent season finales.

During the past three Nitto ATP Finals, only two players have won a higher percentage of points at the season-ending event than they did during the regular season. An analysis of who competed in the 2015, 2016 and 2017 Nitto ATP Finals at The O2 in London highlights that the elite level of competition for every match dictates that most players walk away from the tournament losing more points than they win.

Grigor Dimitrov leads the pack in the past three years with the highest percentage of points won in London at 55.4 per cent. Last year, Dimitrov won a very respectable 53 per cent of points in the regular season, and improved that by 2.4 percentage points to capture the biggest title of his career.

The only other player to perform better in London in November than everywhere else from January to October was Novak Djokovic in 2016. He won 54.9 per cent of his points in the regular season, and inched a little higher to win an even 55 per cent of his points in the last ATP World Tour tournament of the year.

During the past three years, no other player has been able to increase the percentage of points won at the Nitto ATP Finals over their regular season performances.

2015-2017 Percentage Points Won: Regular Season vs. Nitto ATP Finals

All players who have competed in the Nitto ATP Finals in the past three seasons have enjoyed winning more points than they have lost during the regular season. But only eight times out of 26 attempts has a player walked away with winning more than 50 per cent of their points at The O2.

Editor’s note: Infosys ATP Beyond The Numbers author Craig O’Shannessy is also a member of Novak Djokovic’s coaching team.

Pierre-Hugues Herbert recorded his biggest match win for 16 months on Wednesday for a place in the Shenzhen Open quarter-finals. The Frenchman proved to be too strong for second-seeded Greek Stefanos Tsitsipas 6-3, 7-6(4) in one hour and 41 minutes. Herbert knocked out No. 13-ranked Lucas Pouille in May 2017 at the Mutua Madrid Open first round.

World No. 15 Tsitsipas, who is in the running to qualify for the Next Gen ATP Finals at Milan in November, has now lost four of his past five matches since advancing to the Rogers Cup final (l. to Nadal) on 12 August.

Herbert next faces Spain’s Albert Ramos-Vinolas, who edged past Viktor Troicki of Serbia 7-6(4), 4-6, 7-6(3) in two hours and 37 minutes.

Japan’s Yoshihito Nishioka recovered from 0-3 down in the third set and saved two match points at 4-5, 15/40 for a 7-6(5), 3-6, 7-5 victory over sixth seed Denis Shapovalov, the 19-year-old #NextGenATP Canadian, who is in third position in the ATP Race To Milan. Qualifier Nishioka will face Briton Cameron Norrie, who upset third seed Borna Coric 6-4, 7-6(8).