After Shelton, Arthur Gea sinks Jakub Mensik to enter QF at Shanghai Masters

Shanghai, Oct 13 (SocialNews.XYZ) France's Arthur Gea continued his stellar record against Top-20 ranked players as Czech's Jakub Mensik became his latest victim at the ongoing Shanghai Masters here on Tuesday.

World No. 56 Gea had earlier dispatched No. 4 Ben Shelton in the round of 32 and now defeated No. 15 Mensik in the round of 16 in straight sets, 7-6(4), 6-4, to move into the quarterfinals.

Gea now has a 4-1 career record against top-20 players and has 13 wins in his last 15 tour-level matches. "I’m really happy about the result. I had a little revenge today, because at the US Open I stopped in this round," Gea said. "I wanted to go far this week, and obviously now it’s starting to be good. I hope it’s going to continue."

Gea outclassed Mensik in his own game. The Czech is known as a big server, but Gea fired 11 aces to Mensik's six and also won 80% of his first-serve points.

He was 0-3 down in the first-set tie-break but rallied back to win seven of the next eight points to clinch the set. Gea carried the momentum in the next set and achieved the only break of the match when he broke Mensik for a 3-2 lead.

He was serving for the match at 5-4 but faced a breakpoint when he was 30-40 down, but the Frenchman won the next three points to win it 6-4 and secure the match in one hour and 37 minutes.

Gea is playing his first ATP Masters 1000 event and is currently ranked No. 56 in the world. He has jumped 12 places in the ATP Live Rankings and is set to enter the Top 50 on Monday.

The 21-year-old Frenchman won his maiden ATP Tour title in August in Los Cabos and also made it to the US Open fourth round, where he lost to Botic van de Zandschulp. He will face Hubert Hurkacz or Alejandro Davidovich Fokina next in the quarterfinal.

Source: IANS