SHANGHAI (AP) — Jannik Sinner avenged his defeat to Ben Shelton in the fourth round of last year's Shanghai Masters with a 6-4, 7-6 (1) to spoil the 22-year-old American's birthday on Wednesday. Like last year, the duel again featured some incredible shot-making and serving dominance but this time the 23-year old Italian prevailed to improve his record against Shelton to 4-1. "Happy how I handled this situation, it’s obviously a position where I have been last year, and where I am right now, it’s different, so I’m happy to be in the position where I am," Sinner said.
Sinner's break in the ninth game was all that separated the duo in the opening set. Both players then dominated on their own serve through the second before the Italian sped away in the tiebreak and won the last seven points of the match to advance to his seventh ATP Masters 1000 quarterfinal of the year. He will play fifth-ranked Daniil Medvedev, who earlier beat long-time rival Stefanos Tsitsipas 7-6 (3), 6-3, in a match where the Greek player launched into a minutes-long rant against the chair umpire Fergus Murphy over a time violation call and initially refused to continue playing.
“You have never played tennis in your life. You have no clue about tennis, it seems like,” Tsitsipas said to Murphy. “Definitely you’ve had no career.
You probably played serve-and-volley every single time. “Anyways, tennis is a physical sport and we need some time over there. You have to show some compassion beca.