Thirty-two shots that turned the match
Taylor Fritz hit 14 aces in the first set and lost three points behind his first serve. He still lost the set.
Brandon Nakashima beat the sixth seed 7-6 (9), 4-6, 6-3 overnight in Mason, Ohio, and is through to the Cincinnati Open semifinals. The turn came at 4-4 in the opening tiebreak, in a 32-shot exchange Nakashima refused to end first. Fritz held a set point at 7-6. Nakashima wiped it out, then took his fifth chance to close the breaker 11-9.
“Just getting a lot of confidence from all the matches I have been playing,” Nakashima said. “When it came down to the wire in the third set, just tried to trust my game fully and just really proud of how I ended the match.”
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Down a break, then untouchable
Fritz answered with the only break of the second set and carried that into the decider, moving 3-2 in front. Nakashima did not drop another game. He broke straight back, held, broke again for 5-3 and served it out.
The 27th seed had lost four of their six previous meetings, including a Washington semifinal earlier this month. He pointed to one shot as the difference. “In the match in Washington against Fritz, I felt like from the baseline I wasn’t playing that well,” Nakashima said. “Today I was trying to hit the forehand a little bigger and tried staying solid on the backhand and I think that is what got me through.”
Nakashima now leads the tour with 22 hard-court wins this season. He arrived in Cincinnati at a career-high No. 22 in the ATP rankings and climbed to 16th in the live rankings with Friday’s result.
Tiafoe waits, and history is not on his side
Next comes Frances Tiafoe, the 17th seed, who put out 10th-seeded Lorenzo Musetti 7-6 (2), 7-5 later on Friday night. Tiafoe struck 36 winners to the Italian’s 17, enough cover for his 38 unforced errors.
“I just gotta play to win,” Tiafoe said. “We’re all just (searching for that) 1%, trying to figure it out. The guy who plays a little more brave at certain moments gets it.”
Tiafoe holds a 6-1 record in the series and won their only meeting this year, in three sets at the Acapulco semifinals. He also picked up his fourth ATP title this summer on the grass in Halle. Nakashima arrives with the better recent form: back-to-back Masters 1000 semifinals, one week after reaching his first final at that level in Montreal, with the US Open days away.
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