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There always seems to be so much at stake when Daniil Medvedev and Stefanos Tsitsipas face each other on a tennis court.

In fact, of their nine-match history, all meetings but one have come at the ATP Masters 1000, Nitto ATP Finals or Grand Slam level. Saturday’s matchup at the Western & Southern Open, what will be their 10th encounter, is no exception, a spot in the 2022 final hanging in the balance.

World No. 1 Medvedev holds a 7-2 advantage in the ATP Head2Heads.

“He’s one of the best,” said the No. 4 seed Tsitsipas, who advanced to his third consecutive Cincinnati semi-final via a tight 7-6(5), 5-7, 6-3 decision over 2013 finalist John Isner. “I’m going to have to play my game. Of course, an obstacle like Daniil is never easy, but I’m going to try to stay concentrated, try to approach my game in the most precise, best manner. I’ll let my tennis do the talking, and the rest will present itself if it’s something that I deserve.”

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Former college star Cameron Norrie has played the role of professor this week at the Western & Southern Open, schooling three 19-year-olds on his way to the Cincinnati semi-finals. He stunned third seed Carlos Alcaraz in Friday's quarter-finals as he answered the Spaniard's comeback bid with a turnaround of his own in a 7-6(4), 6-7(4), 6-4 victory.

Norrie, who also beat teens Holger Rune and Ben Shelton this week, surrendered a 4-1 lead in the second set before battling back from 1-3 down in the decider with an unflinching performance in the face of the Spaniard's charge.

While Alcaraz was below his best for stretches of the evening, he produced one of the points of the season at 5/4 in the second-set tie-break. The electric exchange sparked the 19-year-old into life, but Norrie never folded even as he was 10 points from defeat.

With the loss, Alcaraz drops to 17-4 at the ATP Masters 1000s this season and loses the chance to claim his third title at that level on the year — a feat that would have lifted him to a new career-high of World No. 2.

More to follow...

Two days after a statement win against Rafael Nadal, Borna Coric showcased his staying power on Friday at the Western & Southern Open by reaching his first ATP Masters 1000 final since 2019. The Croatian, who returned to the ATP Tour in March after shoulder surgery, earned a one-sided 6-4, 6-4 win against Felix Auger-Aliassime to continue his best week of the season.

The World No. 152 is the second-lowest-ranked Cincinnati semi-finalist since the start of the Pepperstone ATP Rankings in 1973, and the third-lowest-ranked ATP Masters 1000 semi-finalist since the start of the prestigious series in 1990. But he wont be setting records like that much longer — he has skyrocketed 86 places to No. 66 in the Pepperstone ATP Live Rankings with his run this week and could rise as high as No. 29 with his first Masters 1000 title.

Asked how he has found such a high level after his first-round loss to countryman Marin Cilic in Montreal, the Croatian credited a hard week of practice after his early exit in Canada.

"Honestly I'm not sure, because last week I was playing really bad," he said post-match. "I was training really hard from last week. I lost on Monday and I decided to train a lot. I was spending many hours on the court, so I think that was the key, to be honest. I was playing many sets and I was trying to find my game."

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Top seeds Rajeev Ram and Joe Salisbury are inching closer to their second title of the season (Monte-Carlo) after handling Karen Khachanov and Denis Shapovalov 6-1, 7-6(6) Friday at the Western & Southern Open.

Should the two-time Grand Slam champions leave Cincinnati, Ohio with the trophy, the duo would rise to World No. 3 in the Pepperstone ATP Live Doubles Teams Rankings (currently fifth) and strengthen their claim for a spot at the eight-team Nitto ATP Finals.

On Saturday, they will look to avenge their loss earlier this season to Santiago Gonzalez and Edouard Roger-Vasselin, who won the previous meeting in Indian Wells in a match tie-break.

Gonzalez and Roger-Vasselin backed up their upset over Montreal champions Wesley Koolhof and Neal Skupski on Friday by ousting two-time Roland Garros champions Kevin Krawietz and Andreas Mies 6-3, 6-7(2), 10-6.

Gonzalez and Roger-Vasselin have played only one other tournament together this season: Indian Wells, in which they made the final before falling to home favourites John Isner and Jack Sock.

Stefanos Tsitsipas reached his third consecutive Western & Southern Open semi-final on Friday, outlasting John Isner 7-6(5), 5-7, 6-3 to set a popcorn clash against World No. 1 Daniil Medvedev.

In a rain-disrupted clash, the Greek weathered a storm on court as he blunted the American’s big-hitting game with heavy topspin, while he clinically took his one break chance in the third set to advance after two hours and 22 minutes in Cincinnati.

“I knew coming into the match that it is never easy playing against him,” Tsitsipas said in his on-court interview. “You have to deal with lots of different variations of play and I think the most important thing is to stay patient because there will be a lot of situations that you can’t really control. That is what I was trying to do today.

“It all came [down] to a few points at the end of that set and I was just able to hang in there and make one more ball back and not give him much to work with.”

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Daniil Medvedev is one of the game’s great defenders from deep behind the baseline. On Friday, he produced one of the great defensive plays of the year to steal a point - and a break of serve - from Taylor Fritz that put him on the path to victory in the quarter-finals of the Western & Southern Open.

Trying to stave off break point to avoid going down 0-2, Fritz fired a 121mph serve that stretched Medvedev nearly outside the doubles alley at the beginning of what proved to be a 24-shot rally. The American immediately found himself on offense, standing on top of the baseline for much of the rally while Medvedev was nearly in the front row of the stands, forced to lunge for several balls, but determined to stay in the point and force an error.

After Medvedev struck a backhand down-the-line, which clipped the net, the top-ranked American hit a forehand approach shot cross-court that sent Medvedev outside the TV camera’s view. At full stretch and running out of court at a rapid clip, the four-time ATP Masters 1000 champion managed to throw up a massive moon-ball lob that Fritz took as a baseline overhead.

Medvedev returned the bounced overhead and Fritz made an unforced forehand error on the next ball, perhaps going for too much in the belief that Medvedev would again track down any response that didn’t paint the line.

“I got a little bit unlucky with the net at first because I was going down the line. It was a pretty good shot,” Medvedev said. “I felt he was tiring in the rally, so it could be a gamechanger.

Daniil Medvedev's quest for a fifth ATP Masters 1000 title moved into top gear at the Western & Southern Open Friday, when he downed Taylor Fritz 7-6(1), 6-3 to reach the semi-finals in Cincinnati.

The top seed backed up his impressive victories over Botic van de Zandschulp and Denis Shapovalov with an all-round display against the American to advance after one hour and 38 minutes.

The 26-year-old fired 32 winners as he laid blows with his racquet, while he hung tight in the key moments during their first ATP Head2Head meeting, saving three set points in the first set to improve to 9-3 in Masters 1000 quarter-finals.

Medvedev suffered a disappointing second-round defeat against Nick Kyrgios in Montreal last week. However, he has found his rhythm in Cincinnati and is now 14-4 at the hard-court event.

“Cincinnati fast courts and fast balls and I have always liked it. But always tricky matches, especially between two great servers,” Medvedev said in his on-court interview. “I feel like me and Taylor served good, even if we aren’t John [Isner] maybe! I knew that it was going to be a tight match.

Carlos Moya was presented with a chance to make history at the Western & Southern Open in Cincinnati 20 years ago and he grabbed it with both hands. The former No. 1 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings captured the crown at the ATP Masters 1000, something no other Spaniard had done before him. In the summer of 2002, the Mallorcan beat World No. 1 Lleyton Hewitt 7-5, 7-6(5) to achieve his feat. A glass ceiling had been smashed by a player who was brave, determined and, above all, ready to pounce when opportunity knocked.

It was 11 August 2002 and sport threw up a conundrum that Moya was more than ready to solve.

He had made his way through a draw that was at the mercy of his forehand, a stroke that, with the aid of the Ohio sun, was capable of bringing any player to his knees. It proved too much for French player Ciryl Saulnier and the Dutch Sjeng Schalken, before the American Michael Chang and German Rainer Schuettler also succumbed to its venom. In the semi-final, Juan Carlos Ferrero, just a 22-year-old on his way to the elite, was unable to deal with the barrage.

However, on the day of the final, Cincinnati was about to throw a curveball.

A summer tournament whose intense sunshine would habitually test the fitness of players to the limit had clouded over from one day to the next. As dawn broke, it was considerably overcast, the mercury had plummeted and the water that had been so sought-after during the days of scorching heat, was threatening to fall from the sky. For the players, affected as they are by the impact of temperature on the behaviour of tennis balls, it was a complete game changer.

It had been half a decade since an American man reached three ATP Masters 1000 quarter-finals in the same season, a drought 11th seed Taylor Fritz ended on Thursday at the Western & Southern Open. With his fourth consecutive win over 2021 runner-up Andrey Rublev, 6-7(4), 6-2, 7-5, the 24-year-old earned a place among the last eight and his first matchup with World No. 1 Daniil Medvedev.

Fritz has now reached at least the quarter-finals in Indian Wells, Monte Carlo and Cincinnati, the BNP Paribas Open ultimately resulting in his first-ever Masters 1000 title (def. Rafael Nadal, 6-3, 7-6(5)).

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This time last year, Fritz was outside the Top 40 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings, a string of frustrating opening-round losses in Washington, Toronto and Cincinnati weighing him down. He returned to Ohio in 2022 a different player in so many respects. Last month, the 13th-ranked Californian, whose entourage these days regularly includes a trail of Netflix cameramen seemingly documenting his every move, pushed through to his first major quarter-final at Wimbledon.

“I was playing pretty bad this time last year,” said Fritz. “It’s weird, because last year, I kind of just started playing really good tennis late in the year — the October [edition of] Indian Wells, is kind of where it all started changing for me. I started gaining confidence, playing really good. Up until that point, my ranking had dropped a tonne.”

The rapid rise of Carlos Alcaraz continues this week at the Western & Southern Open, where his 7-6(4), 6-1 victory against Marin Cilic on Thursday made him the event's youngest quarter-finalist since Andy Murray 16 years ago.

The Spaniard could move past Rafael Nadal and Alexander Zverev to No. 2 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings by winning his third ATP Masters title of the season in Cincinnati. After reaching the quarter-finals, he remains at No. 4 in the Pepperstone ATP Live Rankings but is less than 600 points shy of the second spot.

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Alcaraz showed great resilience against Cilic on centre court, rebounding strongly after missing out on two set points as he attempted to serve out the first set.

"I know that Marin is a really aggressive player. I had to be really focussed on the match," Alcaraz said after his victory. "I knew that it was going to be a tough match, that I had to be [mentally] in the match all the time. I knew that I was going to have my chances to break his big serve. So I'm really happy with the performance and the focus in the match."

A set-and-a-break deficit. Two match points faced. No problem for Felix Auger-Aliassime.

The Canadian was in deep trouble Thursday evening in Cincinnati, but rallied past Jannik Sinner 2-6, 7-6(1), 6-1 to reach the quarter-finals of the Western & Southern Open.

"Jannik was just playing too good. I didn't have a great start, I was missing a lot. But I just had no time. He was playing so fast, so precise, serving well. For a set and a half, it was just too good," Auger-Aliassime said in his on-court interview. "That game he broke me in the second, returning on the baseline for three returns in a row, you can't do much better, so I had to give it to him.

"But at the end, I was still on the court trying to find ways, trying to fight and trying to see how I could make him miss a few more balls and to put myself in a competing position and I did that well... To come back and play that way in the tie-break and the third set, that means a lot to me going forward."

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In Thursday's matchup between the reigning US Open champions and the this year's Australian Open winners, the New York titlists emerged victorious at the Western & Southern Open.

Top seeds Rajeev Ram and Joe Salisbury edged the Australian duo of Thanasi Kokkinakis and Nick Kyrgios 6-7(3), 6-2, 10-8, claiming victory without dropping serve in Cincinnati. The American-British duo saved the only two break points they faced in the opening game of the match but still needed to claim a tight Match Tie-break to earn their first victory since reaching the Wimbledon semi-finals.

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After dropping the first-set tie-break and dominating the second set with two breaks, Ram/Salisbury required three match points to seal the Match Tie-break as the Aussies threatened to come back from 6/9 down.

Behind a 91 per cent (41/45) win rate on first serve, the pair advanced to face Wednesday winners Karen Khachanov and Denis Shapovalov in the quarter-finals.

Prize money for men and women at the US Open will top more than $60 million for the first time, the USTA announced on Thursday.

With input from the ATP and WTA Player Councils, the organisation increased prize money in the earlier rounds and for the qualifying event.

Players who lose in the first round of the main draw will earn $80,000, an increase of 85 per cent since 2016. The US Open qualifying event will award $6.26 million in prize money, which is up 223 per cent from 2016. Final-round qualifying competitors will earn $44,000.

The men's and women's singles champions will each receive $2,600,000 for lifting the trophy and the finalists will be awarded $1,300,000.

The 2022 US Open will be played from 29 August through 11 September. Qualifying begins on 23 August.

Stefanos Tsitsipas continued to look at home in Cincinnati on Thursday at the Western & Southern Open.

The Greek, who has reached the semi-finals of the ATP Masters 1000 event in each of the past two years, advanced to the quarter-finals with a dominant 6-3, 6-3 win against Diego Schwartzman.

Earlier this season, the pair had played two tight three-setters. But Tsitsipas never allowed Schwartzman to get comfortable on the Ohio hard court, triumphing in one hour and minutes to take a 3-2 lead in their ATP Head2Head series.

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The 2019 Nitto ATP Finals champion stood out on return, earning 14 break points in the match and converting five of them. The fourth seed is into the last eight at the Lindner Family Tennis Center without losing a set.

Daniil Medvedev showed further signs of improvement at the Western & Southern Open Thursday, when he backed up his opening-round win over Botic van de Zandschulp with a victory against dynamic lefty Denis Shapovalov.

The 26-year-old overcame Canadian Shapovalov 7-5, 7-5 in one hour and 45 minutes to reach his second ATP Masters 1000 quarter-final of the season. The top seed suffered a disappointing second-round loss against Nick Kyrgios in Montreal last week, but he is looking back to his best on the courts in Cincinnati.

Medvedev hit his flat backhand with consistency, while he stood deep behind the baseline on return to soak up Shapovalov’s lefty serve and penetrating forehand, improving to 3-2 in their ATP Head2Head series.

“The match was pretty tight. I felt that it was a great level. I felt that he was missing a bit more than me but making more points, but that is how Shapo plays,” Medvedev said in his on-court interview. “My goal was to stay there every point possible and try and put pressure on him when I had the chance. But there were many points where I was just running across the baseline, trying to get back his shots. Generally happy with the level.”

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Taylor Fritz reached his third ATP Masters 1000 quarter-final of the season Thursday at the Western & Southern Open, where he clawed past Andrey Rublev 6-7(4), 6-2, 7-5 to set a potential clash with World No. 1 Daniil Medvedev.

The American, who dispatched Nick Kyrgios in his second-round match in Cincinnati, showcased his defensive and offensive skills throughout the two-hour, 32-minute clash against Rublev, soaking up the sixth seed’s aggressive ball striking to improve to 4-2 in their ATP Head2Head series.

Fritz now holds a 35-13 record on the year and is the first American since John Isner and Jack Sock in 2017 to reach the last eight at three Masters 1000 events in a single season.

“I felt at times my serve rhythm was going away, but I just didn’t want to go a break down in the second set. I tried to hit some good serves, take some more risks,” Fritz said in his on-court interview. “I thought at the end of the first I was too passive. So I told myself to take chances [in the second set].

“It was a big match. I wasn’t going to let anything really bother me or affect me to where it might affect me to lose the match. Every time something didn’t go my way, I tried to analyse it and think about what to do next time to try and win the point.”

The International Tennis Writers Association (ITWA) is delighted to announce Giri Nathan as the inaugural winner of the Tom Perrotta Prize for Tennis Journalism.

The annual prize, which is awarded to a writer under the age of 40 who shows excellence in tennis journalism and which includes a $2,000 cash award, will be presented during the US Open at Flushing Meadows.

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The five-strong judging panel loved Nathan’s “refreshing” writing style, particularly in two pieces for Racquet Magazine; “Big Nick Energy”, about Nick Kyrgios and “Emma, Inc”, which examined the impact of Emma Raducanu’s stunning US Open triumph in 2021.

The award is in memory of American writer Tom Perrotta, whose exemplary contributions to tennis were curtailed by his untimely death at the age of 44.

Playing at the Western & Southern Open for the first time in five years on Wednesday night, Rafael Nadal showed the Cincinnati fans why it was worth the wait to see their 2013 champion return. But after battling Borna Coric for an engrossing two hours, 51 minutes on centre court, the Spaniard bowed out of the ATP Masters 1000 event after his opening match.

Playing in his first match since withdrawing ahead of the Wimbledon semi-finals with an abdominal tear, Nadal dropped a 7-6(9), 4-6, 6-3 decision to the Croatian as he struggled to consistently play at the level which has propelled him to four tour-level titles this season.

"Obviously I didn't play my best match," Nadal said in his post-match presser, later revealing he was only able to play two practice sets in the buildup. "[It is] something that can happen. Historically this tournament has been difficult for me. So coming back from a tough period of time, [it is] something that's easy to accept and easy to say congrats to Borna, that he played better."

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Nadal missed out on two set points in a dramatic first-set tie-break but regrouped to force a decider. Down the stretch, Coric dictated the rallies as he claimed his lone break of the match midway through the final set to earn the statement victory.

As far back as his 2016 breakthrough at Flushing Meadows, when as a highly touted teen he claimed the US Open boys’ singles title, Felix Auger-Aliassime has had to tote some outsized outside expectations.

Here we could barely pronounce his name, yet we were sure this uncannily athletic Canadian was destined for a title-filled career. The thing is, we forgot that he was just 16; we expected it all to happen overnight.   

“You shouldn’t listen to what is said outside,” said Auger-Aliassime last week in his native Montreal, where he became the first Quebecois to reach the quarter-finals of the National Bank Open Presented by Rogers on home turf. “You always try to see the future. I do that, too. But what a player has to do is to keep a cool head because every point you play, you must win them by yourself. You have to win each match you play and start again every day. Nothing is easy.”

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The successes would indeed come. In 2019, the then-18-year-old became the youngest member of the Top 25 in the Pepperstone ATP Rankings in 20 years, the youngest ATP 500 finalist (Rio de Janeiro) in a decade, and the youngest Miami Open semi-finalist in tournament history, which dates back to 1985. By 2021, he had cracked the Top 10, only the third Canadian to do so after Milos Raonic and Denis Shapovalov, while reaching the Wimbledon quarter-finals and US Open semi-finals.