WASHINGTON
\nDefending champion Alex de Minaur powered into the Washington Open quarter-finals with a clinical 6-2, 6-3 victory over fellow Australian Cruz Hewitt.
\nMen\u2019s second seed Ben Shelton also advanced, as did women\u2019s top seed Jessica Pegula and No. 2 Elina Svitolina.
\nTop-seeded De Minaur was always likely to prove too much for 17-year-old qualifier Hewitt \u2014 son of Aussie great LleytonHewitt \u2014 who had only captured his first ATP victory in Tuesday\u2019s first round.
\nThe first set threatened to become a demolition as De Minaurraced to a 5-0 lead.
\nBut Hewitt found his feet, breaking back in the sixth game and holding serve before succumbing 6-2.
\nCheered on by a crowd that included his famous father, Hewitt started the second set brightly.
\nBut he was broken again on his second service game and could not reel in De Minaur, who warmly embraced the youngster at the net after taking the match.
\nIt was the first head-to-head ATP Tour match between the two, who have known each other for years.
\n\u201cIt was definitely weird,\u201d said De Minaur. \u201cI knew I was going to play him on the tour someday, but I didn\u2019t actually expect it to be this week.
\n\u201cIt was an amazing feeling. Even all the lead up, seeing all the incredible pictures that we have together and how we\u2019ve both grown up. \u201cI\u2019m glad I managed to get through, but I\u2019m sure we\u2019re going to have many battles in the years to come.\u201d
\nDe Minaur next faces American Brandon Nakashima, who upset Czech seventh seed Jakub Mensik 7-6 (7\/5), 3-6, 6-4.
\nUS home hope Shelton advanced with a gritty 6-7 (3\/7), 6-3, 6-4, victory over France\u2019s Ugo Humbert. After handing Humbert the first set with a double fault on set point, Shelton dominated the second.
\nBut the third set was a tense affair and after seizing a break for a 5-4 lead Shelton had to fend off a break point before polishing off the match with a sharply angled serve that Humbert smacked into the net.
\n\u201cFor me, it was all about heart tonight,\u201d Shelton said after lining up a meeting with Chile\u2019s Alejandro Tabile, a 6-3, 7-6 (8\/6) winner over France\u2019s Terence Atmane.
\nPegula also had to rally from a set down, saying she started her match against Poland\u2019s Frech \u201cjust a little off\u201d after a first-round bye.
\n\u201cI wasn\u2019t quite attacking the ball, and I felt like once I did that, then everything else kind of started to click together,\u201d said Pegula, who finished with 42 winners and won 12 of the last 15 games to triumph 3-6, 6-3, 6-0.
\nPegula next plays fifth-seeded Anna Kalinskaya, who saved two match points to beat Indonesia\u2019s Janice Tjen 1-6, 6-3, 7-6 (9\/7).
\nUkraine\u2019s Svitolina booked her quarter-final berth with a 7-6 (7\/4), 6-4 victory over Uzbekistan\u2019s Polina Kudermetova. She\u2019ll face rising Philippines star Alexandra Eala for a place in the semi-finals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON Defending champion Alex de Minaur powered into the Washington Open quarter-finals with a clinical 6-2, 6-3 victory over fellow Australian Cruz Hewitt. Men\u2019s second seed Ben Shelton also advanced, as did women\u2019s top seed Jessica Pegula and No. 2 Elina Svitolina. Top-seeded De Minaur was always likely to prove too much for 17-year-old qualifier …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":101083,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101103"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101116,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101103\/revisions\/101116"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}