It’s quarter-finals day at the 2019 Montreal Rogers Cup Masters 1000 Series in Canada, which gets underway around 5pm GMT. Monday’s preview highlighted that a player seeded no higher than four has the best chance of winning the title this week and this could very well transpire as the top three seeds Nadal, Thiem and Zverev are all through to the quarter-final stage. There’s, four other top-ten seeds left in the draw; sixth seed Khachanov, seventh seed Fognini, eighth seed Medvedev and tenth seed Bautista Agut and finally, sixteenth seed Monfils completes the quarter-finals line-up.
Defending champion Nadal faces old foe Fognini for the sixteenth time tonight, the world number two leads the head-to-head 11-4 including 5-1 on hard courts and judging by the quality of his two wins this week it looks like Nadal is going to be dominant from start to finish again and take this in straight sets. The winner of this quarter-final will face the winner of the Bautista Agut and Monfils one, Monfils leads the head-to-head 3-1 between 2014 and 2015 all in straight sets on hard courts and Bautista Agut won their last meeting in 2017 on hard courts at this tournament, which was an epic 4-6 7-6 7-6 thriller.
The bottom half of the draw quarter-finals are between third seed Zverev (advised @ 10/1) and sixth seed Khachanov and second seed Thiem and eighth seed Medvedev. Zverev and Khachanov are meeting for the fourth time tonight, Zverev won the first two on hard courts in Russia back in 2016, a five-set epic at the 2018 French Open and Khachanov won their last meeting at the 2018 Paris Masters 1000 Series 6-1 6-2.
It’s a tough one to call as neither player has been in great form of late, Zverev was really struggling with his serve against Basilashvili last night, but the German toughed it out and gained revenge for his third set tie-break loss at the ATP 500 Hamburg against Basilashvili recently, on this occasion Zverev won 7-5 5-7 7-6. Khachanov has looked solid so far this week, beating the dangerous Wawrinka and precocious NextGen Canadian star Auger-Alisiamme both in three sets and if Zverev serves poorly tonight, it’s going to be very hard work for him to stay in touch with the big-serving and hitting Russian.
Finally, the fourth quarter-final is between second seed Thiem and eighth seed and ATP 500 Washington finalist Medvedev. They are meeting for the third time, Thiem won both matches, the first in 2018 at St Petersburg on hard courts in three sets and their last meeting on clay in Barcelona this year in straight sets. On current form, Medvedev looks like good value to win his first match against Thiem as he’s on a roll at present winning six of his last seven matches on hard courts all in straight sets.
