Tsitsipas zooms past Zapata Miralles in Madrid

Stefanos Tsitsipas is steaming in the direction of Carlos Alcaraz once again in Spain. The Greek took out Bernabe Zapata Miralles 6-3, 6-1 to reach the last eight of the Madrid Masters at the Caja Magica on Tuesday night.

Tsitsipas, ranked No 5, will face German lucky loser Jan-Lennard Struff next.

Alcaraz and Tsitsipas are the only top 10 players remaining in the draw in Madid after second-seeded Daniil Medvedev and fifth-seeded Andrey Rublev were knocked out or the draw on Tuesday in Madrid.

Tsitsipas was defeated by Alcaraz in last week’s Barcelona final, 6-3, 6-4, to fall to 0-4 lifetime against the Spaniard.

But the 24-year-old Greek has had the number of all the Spaniards not named Nadal or Alcaraz…

It was a tricky encounter in the early going for Tsitsipas, who had his serve broken twice in succession in the opening set, and then again in the second set, but he didn’t let up and hammered away at the Spaniard’s serve, converting 7 of 16 break points and winning a remarkable 39 of 62 return points against Zapata Miralles.

“It was definitely tricky. He came out pretty strong in some of my service games,”Tsitsipas said. “It seemed kind of chaotic in the beginning but then I gave myself time to think and construct my points.”

The Greek edged out Austrian wildcard Dominic Thiem (3-6, 6-1, 7-6 (5)) and beat Argentinian Sebastian Baez, the No 25 seed (7-5, 3-6, 6-3) ahead of his victory.

Earlier in the tournament, Zapata Miralles, ranked No 42, won against American Mackenzie McDonald (3-6, 6-3, 7-6 (4)), No 19 seed Daniel Evans (6-3, 6-2) and Russian qualifier Roman Safiullin (6-3, 3-6, 6-3).

Madrid Masters, other last 16 results (Caja Magica, clay, EUR 7.705.780, most recent results first):

• Jan-Lennard Struff beat Pedro Cachin: 7-6 (7), 6-7 (7), 6-3
• Zhizhen Zhang beat Taylor Fritz (8): 3-6, 7-6 (5), 7-6 (8)
• Carlos Alcaraz (1) beat Alexander Zverev (13): 6-1, 6-2
• Borna Coric (17) beat Alejandro Davidovich Fokina (29): 6-7 (5), 6-3, 7-6 (5)
• Aslan Karatsev (Q) beat Daniil Medvedev (2): 7-6 (1), 6-4
• Daniel Altmaier (LL) beat Jaume Munar: 6-3, 6-0
• Karen Khachanov (10) beat Andrey Rublev (5): 7-6 (8), 6-4

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