Gael Monfils is through to his first Tour-level quarter-final of the year taking advantage of a wide-open Canadian Open draw.
The French player didn't only benefit from the open draw, he did some cleaning as well. He sent Stefanos Tsitsipas to an early rendezvous with Paula Badosa in Cincinnati but also benefitted from his opponent, Aleksandar Vukic, doing some cleaning on his own.
The Australian bested both Borna Coric and Sebastian Korda en route to this 3rd round so he's earned his place as well. The match went largely as expected as Monfils came out with a pretty good blueprint for beating his opponent.
Vukic is an aggressive baseliner capable of hitting really well but he's not as consistent as someone like Carlos Alcaraz because he'd be Top 5 if he was. Monfils was always pretty good against those players using his athleticism to cover the court really well and we saw Vukic struggle with it rather quickly.
Monfils had some minor chances but his best one came at 3-3 when he initially wasted a 40-0 lead only to break regardless. From there it was a relatively swift cruise thanks to his excellent serving and Vukic losing his precision.
The second set saw Monfils employ the same blueprint as he took an early lead in the set and then cruised from there. Vukic had break points in the final game of the match but the experienced veteran found a way to avoid major complications keeping it in two.
The final score was 6-4 6-4 behind 9 aces and 24 winners. Monfils only had 9 unforced errors which is really good. Another quarter-final for him at the Canadian Open, his best ATP 1000 event as he played two semi-finals here including now two quarter-finals. He'll face either Andy Murray or Jannik Sinner in the next round.
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