Sinner spoils Shelton's birthday with Shanghai revenge

pFor the second straight year at the a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/tournaments/shanghai/5014/overview'Rolex Shanghai Masters/a, a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/jannik-sinner/s0ag/overview'Jannik Sinner/a and a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/ben-shelton/s0s1/overview'Ben Shelton/a met in the fourth round. On Wednesday, Sinner reversed last season's result to deny the American the biggest win of his career by PIF ATP Ranking on his 22nd birthday./ppSinner scored a 6-4, 7-6(1) win in an entertaining match full of electric shotmaking, improving to 4-1 in the pair's Lexus ATP Head2Head. The World No. 1 has not lost to Shelton since their first meeting last year in Shanghai, when the American came from behind to prevail in a third-set tie-break./pp"It was very tough. He played only first serves, except one second serve," Sinner said, referring to Shelton's incredible 95 per cent first-serve percentage in the opening set. "I tried to wait a little bit. Obviously playing against him, even if it's a second serve, it's very tough to return. /pp"But if I look the positive picture, how I ended the match, I tried to stay a bit more aggressive, which I've done, and this hopefully can give me confidence for the for the next round."/p[ATP APP]pThe ATP Tour leader in wins (62) and titles (six) this season, Sinner is now through to his seventh ATP Masters 1000 quarter-final of the year mdash; the most in a single season since a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/alexander-zverev/z355/overview'Alexander Zverev/a's seven in 2018. The 23-year-old has reached the quarters in all 14 events he has entered this season and will next meet a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/daniil-medvedev/mm58/overview'Daniil Medvedev/a or a href='https://www.atptour.com/en/players/stefanos-tsitsipas/te51/overview'Stefanos Tsitsipas/a./ppstrongPlayers to reach 7+ ATP Masters 1000 QFs in a season (since 2014)br //strong/ptable tbody tr td2018nbsp;/td tdZverev (7)/td /tr tr td2017/td tdNadal (7)/td /tr tr td2016/td tdDjokovic (7), Raonic (7)/td /tr tr td2015/td tdBerdych (8), Djokovic (8), Murray (7), Nadal (7)/td /tr tr td2014/td tdFederer (7), Ferrer (7), Raonic (7)/td /tr /tbody/tablepSinner held firm in the face of an electric start from Shelton, who won his first 16 service points and created the first two break points at 2-1 in the opening set. In the ninth game of the first set, the Italian fended off a Shelton overhead to earn his first break point of the match, with the pressure yielding a 5-4 lead before he served out the set to love./ppShelton employed the drop shot to great effect throughout the match, but it was Sinner who snuck one in to fight off a break point at 2-3 in set two. The American again threatened with Sinner serving at 3-4, but this time Sinner leaned on his serve to escape 0/40. Sinner saved all seven break points against him mdash; two in the first set and five in the second mdash; according to Infosys ATP Stats./pblockquote class="twitter-tweet"p lang="en" dir="ltr"A Sinner special in Shanghai ✨a href="https://twitter.com/janniksin?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"@janniksin/a | a href="https://twitter.com/SH_RolexMasters?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"@SH_RolexMasters/a | a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/RolexShanghaiMasters?src=hashamp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"#RolexShanghaiMasters/a a href="https://t.co/bQibf80NO7"pic.twitter.com/bQibf80NO7/a/pmdash; ATP Tour (@atptour) a href="https://twitter.com/atptour/status/1843894525581779300?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw"October 9, 2024/a/blockquotescript async="" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"/scriptpAll four of their previous Lexus ATP Head2Head meetings included a tie-break, so it was fitting that a tie-break decided the second set in Shanghai. Shelton took the opening point on serve, but Sinner sprinted through the finish line by winning the next seven, finding his best ball-striking at the crucial moment to wrap up the win in one hour, 28 minutes./pp"He had chances in the first set, he had chances in a second set," Sinner reflected. "I'm happy with how I handled the difficult and tough situations. It was a very close one."/pp[NEWSLETTER FORM]/p