Felix Auger-Aliassime is just 18 years of age but is already been spoken about in the tennis world with a lot of awe. And today, he showed why with a shock win over the Australian Open semi-finalist Stefanos Tsitsipas in the second round of the Indian Wells Masters.
And it wasn’t just the win but the manner of victory that would have warmed the hearts of Auger-Aliassime’s fans, who dropped just six games in the process to move into the third round of the Indian Wells Masters.
The Canadian player did face seven break points during the encounter against the 10th-ranked Tsitsipas, but saved all of them to complete a facile win. This was the first time that Felix Auger-Aliassime had won against a top-10 opponent.
And with this shock win following his first round victory as a 17-year-old at this very tournament last year, he has taken giant strides into into making it this big at the world stage apart from helping himself to the top 50 in world rankings.
He will now take on the No. 21 seed Roberto Bautista Agut or Japan’s Yoshihito Nishioka in his third round encounter.
Awesome! The young ?? @felixtennis overpowers 64 62 the #NextGenATP champion in charge Tsitsipas in @BNPPARIBASOPEN R2! ? pic.twitter.com/ZN4qk75WjV
— Next Gen ATP Finals (@nextgenfinals) March 9, 2019
Despite Auger-Aliassime having had the time of his life this year, not too any would have given him any hope of making it to the final at Rio Open earlier this year and combined with back to back wins here, would propel his rankings from outside of top 100 to inside of the top 50.
Interestingly, these two players had never met at the highest level before this encounter but Auger-Aliassime has played Tsitsipas thrice before at the juniors level. Auger-Aliassime had won all three of those matches.
In another match of the day, Marcos Giron was a shock winner over Alex de Minaur, while Laslo Djere continued to remain one of the most improved players in recent times and went into the third round with a 6-3, 6-4 win over Guido Andreozzi.
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