WIMBLEDON, 4 Jul: 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.
\nThe 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.
\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.
\nPlaying 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.
\nAgainst 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.
\nAfter 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.
\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
\nThis 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.
\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
\nKyrgios 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.
\nGarin, who is ranked 43rd, reached his first Grand Slam quarterfinal in his 15th major appearance. (AP)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WIMBLEDON, 4 Jul: 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 unseeded Kyrgios improved […]<\/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-194563","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\/194563","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=194563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194563\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}