Carlos Alcaraz lost to Tommy Paul at the Canadian Open last week, but he got the better of him at the Cincinnati Masters.
Paul and Alcaraz have played some pretty big matches, and the American has been quite successful. It's been a really good year for Paul generally, but the American had great success against Alcaraz even last year.
He stunned him at the Canadian Open last year as well and repeated that last week. In between those two matches, we had another one in Miami this year. That one was won by Alcaraz, so there is a trend there. It's Paul, then Alcaraz, and then the American again.
The trend didn't stop today as Alcaraz won the match, but it was a really close one. We predicted Alcaraz winning in our preview simply because it's hard to beat him twice. Paul gave it his best and was on the verge of winning the opening set.
Paul was up 5-2 and served for the set at 5-3 but lost his serve to give Alcaraz a chance. A few games later, in the tiebreak, Paul was again up 3-1 and then 5-3 but still lost it. Alcaraz never gave up on that set and was heavily rewarded for it.
He did the same thing again in the second set as Paul jumped out to an early 2-1 lead with a break in hand, only to lose his serve in the next game. The match was pretty close, but Alcaraz was able to come up with better shots in the most crucial moments. He also limited his errors, and that helped as well.
The end of the second set was a pretty crazy sequence of events as we saw four consecutive breaks starting at 3-3. Paul was up a break twice but failed to serve out the set, ending up in a tiebreak. It was quite the tiebreak as Paul won it 7-0.
Despite losing the tiebreak ins a terrible manner, Alcaraz didn't entirely lose focus. He came out strong in the 3rd, taking an early break which he held for a while. Some raindrops briefly stopped play midway through, but the match resumed hoping to finish before any significant shower.
Eventually, it was stopped altogether at 4-3, with Alcaraz trying to close out the match. Upon return, the Spanish player managed to get it done, finishing off the match. A very good win for the Spaniard 7-6(6) 6-7(0) 6-3.
He had an incredible 42 winners in this 3-hour battle with Paul and he will face Max Purcell in the next round.
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