Carreno speeds up recovery in Winston-Salem | ATP Tour

Winston-Salem

Carreno accelerates his recovery in Winston-Salem

Now he will seek his first quarterfinals since Basel 2022

August 20, 2024

Pablo Carreno Busta’s progress has not stopped during this North American hardcourt swing. Entering this month, the Spaniard was not even in the Top 800 of the PIF ATP Rankings, and thanks to his victory on Tuesday at the Winston-Salem Open, he has risen to No. 274 in the live rankings.

A day after beating local Omni Kumar in straight sets, the seven-time ATP Tour champion has once again won convincingly, this time against Kazakh Alexander Schevchenko with scores of 6-2, 6-2 in the second round of the ATP 250 prior to the US Open.

His most difficult moment came at the start of the second set when he went from 2-0 to 2-2, but at that moment he broke again against the world No. 60 and regained total control of the match until taking it in just 70 minutes of play.

The 2016 winner, who played his first ATP tournament at Roland Garros in a year and a half after recovering from tendinitis in his right elbow, is now 5-4 on the season, and 5-2 since August.

His next opponent will be Australian Aleksandar Vukic, with whom he has no previous encounters and who is coming off a win over Adrian Mannarino (7-6, 2-6, 6-1). One more win would put him close to the Top 250 in the live rankings, and would put him in his first quarterfinals since Basel 2022.

In other results of the day, Croatian Borna Coric eliminated the defending champion, Argentine Sebastian Baez, with partial scores of 6-3, 6-4 to leave his Lexus ATP HeadToHead with the Buenos Aires native at 1-2. The rivalry began exactly a year ago in the semifinals of this event. The former world No. 12 will now face Australian Rinky Hijikata.

Also, American Zachary Svajda, who entered as a lucky loser, pulled off another surprise by beating fellow Argentine Francisco Cerúndolo 6-4, 6-4 to claim his biggest ranking victory. His next opponent will be Pavel Kotov, seeded No. 15.

The negative day for Argentine tennis continued with the defeats of Tomás Etcheverry and Mariano Navone. The former fell to Belgian Zizou Bergs, who won 4-6, 7-5, 6-3. Meanwhile, Chinese Juncheng Shang was in charge of defeating Navone 7-5, 6-3. See the full tournament table.