Happy in Hamburg! Fils, Rune set quarter-final clash, Zverev stays alive

Can Arthur Fils turn consistency into the biggest title of his career at the Hamburg Open?

The #NextGenATP Frenchman on Thursday booked his spot in the quarter-finals at the clay-court ATP 500 with a 7-6(3), 6-2 triumph against 2023 finalist Laslo Djere. Fils, who himself reached the semi-finals in Hamburg a year ago, has now reached six tour-level quarter-finals this season.

“Last year he made the final here, so I knew from the start it was going to be a tough match,” said Fils in his post-match interview. “Especially the first set, I think we played a great intensity, a lot of rallies. I was feeling OK, but when I was looking at him, he was looking super fresh. At the end I managed to play very good in important moments and I’m very happy about this win.”

"What a finish, what a point" 🤩

A relentless 7-6(3) 6-2 showing sends No.5 seed @ArthurFils1 into an 11th ATP quarter-final!@hamburgopenatp | #HamburgOpenATP500 pic.twitter.com/oVrsYNfBis

— ATP Tour (@atptour) July 18, 2024

Fils was in trouble at 4-4, 15/40 in the opening set of his maiden Lexus ATP Head2Head clash with Djere. The 20-year-old dug deep to hold serve from there, however, and went on to dominate the first-set tie-break before racing through the second set.

The current leader in the PIF ATP Live Race To Jeddah, Fils saved six of seven break points he faced against Djere, according to Infosys ATP Stats, en route to a one-hour, 46-minute win in hot and humid conditions in Hamburg. Fils is just the fifth man to reach multiple Hamburg quarter-finals before the age of 21, after Mats Wilander, Kent Carlsson, Novak Djokovic and Andrei Medvedev.

“When I’m practising super hard like I’m doing, of course I am able to show a great level and great fitness for a few hours,” reflected Fils, when asked about the physical side of his game. “If a guy wants to beat me, it has to be tough. I am not going to let the match go.”

Awaiting Fils in the last eight will be second seed Holger Rune, who enjoyed a straight-sets win of his own against Marco Trungelliti.

Rune converted three of six break points he earned en route to a 6-4, 6-3 triumph against the Argentine qualifier. With his 80-minute triumph, the second seed became the first Danish man to reach the Hamburg quarter-finals in the Open Era.

The 21-year-old Rune was particularly happy to back up his opening win against Fabian Marozsan in Germany, where he is competing for the first time since his Wimbledon run ended with straight-sets fourth-round defeat to Novak Djokovic.

“It’s been very intense since Wimbledon. I only had one day off, actually,” said Rune in his on-court interview. "I was like, ‘I don’t want to rest, I want to go straight back to practice’, because I was very disappointed. I went straight back to work on the things that needed to be done, and now I have the chance to train those things in matches.”

Top seed Alexander Zverev kept alive his hopes to defend the ATP 500 title with a topsy-turvy 4-6, 6-2, 7-5 victory against Frenchman Hugo Gaston.

The home favourite produced superb all-court coverage, chasing down a plethora of Gaston’s drop shots and showing no troubling signs of movement despite still healing from a knee injury suffered at Wimbledon. Zverev regrouped after losing the first set on a controversial 30-ball rally, during which the German thought there should have been a double-bounce call.

A thrilling deciding set featured five breaks of serve, but it was the 27-year-old who held his nerve in the latter stages, breaking at 5-5 and closing out the win after two hours, 37 minutes. Now tied with Jannik Sinner for most wins on the ATP Tour this season (42), Zverev next meets China’s Zhang Zhizhen, who beat Flavio Cobolli 6-1, 7-6(5).