Querrey Knocks Out Nishikori

Sam Querrey’s hot hard court form continues with the American dumping second seed Kei Nishikori out of the Abierto Mexicano Telcel 6-4, 6-3 on Wednesday night. Having captured an eighth ATP World Tour title in Delray Beach on Sunday, the 27 year old snapped a four-match losing streak against the World No. 6 in the Emirates ATP Rankings.

The win puts Querrey through to his third straight ATP World Tour quarter-final and ensured the Acapulco tournament was without its top two seeds after David Ferrer’s earlier defeat to Alexandr Dolgopolov.

Nishikori was coming off a title run of his own in Memphis less than two weeks ago. It marked the first time in four ATP World Tour events this year the Japanese player did not reach at least the quarter-finals.

“It’s always hard when you play against good players, but it wasn’t my day today,” Nishikori said. “There were many things that I should do better, especially my serve and I wasn’t going for enough, my groundstrokes, my forehand especially, I was missing a lot, so I wasn’t aggressive enough to beat Sam today. Also he was hitting really big serves so there weren’t many chances for my return game.”

Querrey sent down eight aces and dropped just four points when his first serve found the mark. He will next face fellow American Taylor Fritz after the 18 year old – who will become the youngest player to crack the Top 100 in next week’s Emirates ATP Rankings – overcame an age gap of 17 years to beat Victor Estrella Burgos of the Dominican Republic 6-1, 6-3. Fritz claimed 75 per cent of first-serve points and broke five times to progress in one hour.

Seventh seed Grigor Dimitrov also moved safely through to the quarter-finals on Wednesday night, with the 2014 champion posting a routine 6-3, 6-4 result against Donald Young. The Bulgarian notched his fifth win in six FedEx ATP Head2Head clashes against the American, claiming 78 per cent of first-serve points and saving seven of eight break points in the one-hour, 26-minute affair.