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WIMBLEDON, England, Jul 4 (AP) \u2014 Much quieter, much calmer than in his previous match, Nick Kyrgios overcame a troublesome right shoulder to deliver 35 aces and beat Brandon Nakashima 4-6, 6-4, 7-6 (2), 3-6, 6-2 at Wimbledon on Monday to reach a Grand Slam quarterfinal for the first time in 7 1\/2 years.<\/p>\n
The unseeded Kyrgios improved to 6-0 over his career in five-setters at the All England Club and collected his tour-leading 11th grass-court victory of the season.<\/p>\n
\u201cI need a glass of wine, for sure, tonight. For sure,\u201d Kyrgios told the crowd during his on-court interview, after swapping out his rule-conforming white hat and shoes for red versions.<\/p>\n
Playing before a nearly full house at Centre Court, the 27-year-old Australian only occasionally displayed his unusual repertoire of trick shots \u2014 a between-the-legs swing here, an underarm serve there \u2014 or the temper that earned fines of $10,000 for spitting in the direction of a heckling spectator at the end of his first-round match and $4,000 for an audible obscenity during his tempestuous win against No. 4 seed Stefanos Tsitsipas in the third round.<\/p>\n
Against Nakashima, an unseeded 20-year-old from California, Kyrgios repeatedly was visited during changeovers by a trainer, who massaged and manipulated his shoulder. There was a stretch where Kyrgios\u2019 high-speed serves dipped from above 135 mph to closer to 110 mph, but he eventually seemed to get past that and was back to producing unreturnable offerings over and over.<\/p>\n
After Nakashima evened things by taking the fourth set with a break, then went up 1-0 in the fifth, Kyrgios surged to the finish. He earned five games in a row, before serving it out and closing this way from love-30: cross-court forehand passing winner; hanging in on an 11-stroke exchange until Nakashima missed a backhand; 134 mph service winner; forehand volley winner.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve played a lot of tennis in the last month and a half. I\u2019m just proud of the way I steadied the ship,\u201d Kyrgios said. \u201cHonestly that\u2019s what I was thinking about: I\u2019ve never lost a five-set match here. … I was like, \u2018I\u2019ve been here before. I\u2019ve done it before.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
This will be Kyrgios\u2019 third appearance in a major quarterfinal. The others came as a teenager at Wimbledon in 2014 \u2014 when he surprised then-No. 1 Rafael Nadal along the way \u2014 and at the Australian Open in 2015.<\/p>\n
\u201cI stepped out here against one of the greatest of all time and beat Nadal,\u201d Kyrgios said. \u201cSo these are all things I have in the back of my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kyrgios next faces unseeded Cristian Garin, a 26-year-old from Chile who authored the fortnight\u2019s first comeback from two sets down, saving two match points and turning things around to defeat No. 19 seed Alex de Minaur 2-6, 5-7, 7-6 (3), 6-4, 7-6 (10-6) after more than 4 1\/2 hours.<\/p>\n
Garin, who is ranked 43rd, reached his first Grand Slam quarterfinal in his 15th major appearance.<\/p>\n
The other quarterfinal on their half of the draw will be No. 11 Taylor Fritz against 22-time Grand Slam champion Rafael Nadal or No. 21 Botic van de Zandschulp. Fritz, a 24-year-old American, has yet to drop a set and will be making his major quarterfinal debut after defeating qualifier Jason Kubler 6-3, 6-1, 6-4.<\/p>\n
In the first women\u2019s fourth-round match Monday, 17th-seeded Elena Rybakina of Kazakhstan made it to the Wimbledon quarterfinals for the first time with a 7-5, 6-3 victory over Petra Martic. Rybakina leads the tour in aces this season and added six to her total, helping her double up Martic in winners, 26-13.<\/p>\n
Rybakina now faces Alize Cornet \u2014 who ended No. 1 Iga Swiatek\u2019s 37-match winning streak on Saturday \u2014 or Ajla Tomljanovic. Later women\u2019s contests were two-time major champion Simona Halep against No. 4 Paula Badosa, and No. 20 Amanda Anisimova (who eliminated Coco Gauff last week) against Harmony Tan (who eliminated Serena Williams in the first round).<\/p>\n
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WIMBLEDON, England, Jul 4 (AP) \u2014 Much quieter, much calmer than in his previous match, Nick Kyrgios overcame a troublesome right shoulder to deliver 35 aces and beat Brandon Nakashima 4-6, 6-4, 7-6 (2), 3-6, 6-2 at Wimbledon on Monday to reach a Grand Slam quarterfinal for the first time in 7 1\/2 years. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-194557","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194557","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194557"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194557\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194557"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194557"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194557"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}