Australia’s Alex de Minaur has reached the quarter-finals at the Zhuhai Championships’ after knocking out Andy Murray in the last 16.
The 32-year-old Scot had been hoping on Thursday to follow up his victory over American Tennys Sandgren, his first ATP Tour singles win since January, with another success which would take him through to last eight.
But despite taking the opening set, and putting up a late fight against the seventh seed, Murray eventually fell 4-6 6-2 6-4 in a contest which lasted two hours and 42 minutes.
De Minaur will take on fourth seed Borna Coric, who saw off Wu Di of China 6-3 6-3, in the quarter-finals.
Meanwhile, Greek top seed Stefanos Tsitsipas, one of a number of players who took part in the Laver Cup last weekend to struggle this week, pulled out with illness after losing the second set to Adrian Mannarino.
Second seed Roberto Bautista Agut, the European reserve at the Laver Cup, did make the last eight, beating countryman Pablo Andujar 7-5 7-5, while Andreas Seppi saved five match points in a deciding tie-break against China’s Zhang Zhizhen, eventually winning 7-6 (7-4) 4-6 7-6 (10-8).
At the Chengdu Open, second seed Felix Auger-Aliassime suffered his fourth-straight defeat in the opening round.
The 19-year-old Canadian has admitted to struggling with the weight of expectation after his rapid rise up the rankings and a trip to China did not help change his fortunes.
Auger-Aliassime fought back from a set down against Portugal’s Joao Sousa but lost out 6-4 6-7 (5-7) 6-4.
It was a bad day for the leading names with top seed John Isner losing 6-7 (11-13) 7-6 (7-5) 7-6 (7-4) to Egor Gerasimov, while third seed Benoit Paire and fifth seed Dusan Lajovic also lost.
Paire went down 6-3 3-6 6-3 to Pablo Carreno Busta, while Dusan Lajovic was beaten 6-3 6-3 by South African lucky loser Lloyd Harris.
US Open semi-finalist Grigor Dimitrov continued his fine form by beating Dan Evans 7-5 7-5, while Denis Shapovalov is the only other seed remaining having narrowly defeated Bradley Klahn to reach the quarter-finals.
