Eighth-seeded Belgian David Goffin recorded his fourth win in five FedEx ATP Head2Head meetings against Robin Haase of the Netherlands 7-5, 6-3 in 83 minutes on Wednesday at the Mutua Madrid Open. Goffin led 3-1 in the first set, which included five breaks of serve. On Tuesday, Haase earned the 200th match win of his career with victory over South Korea’s Hyeon Chung.
Goffin will now play Great Britain's Kyle Edmund, victor over two-time former champion and Serbian No. 10 seed Novak Djokovic. The Belgian won his lone meeting against Edmund in the 2015 Davis Cup final.
Dominic Thiem won his 13th match on clay this season, coming from a set down to beat Argentina's Federico Delbonis 4-6, 6-3, 7-5.
The 2017 finalist (l. to Nadal), who won his ninth ATP World Tour title in February at the Argentina Open (d. Bedene), won 81 per cent of first-service points en route to a two-hour, 23-minute victory. Thiem had served for the match at 5-4 in the deciding set, but gifted Delbonis a route back into the match with a trio of unforced errors. The Austrian recovered well, however, breaking once more in the eleventh game with agressive play before securing the win with his sixth ace of the match.
Thiem will meet Croatia's Borna Coric for a spot in the quarter-finals. Thiem and Coric are tied at 1-1 in their FedEx ATP Head2Head series with both of their previous meetings coming at ATP World Tour Masters 1000 level in 2017 (Miami, Madrid).
Coric dropped just two games to beat BMW Open by FWU quarter-finalist Jan-Lennard Struff (l. to Zverev) 6-2, 6-0. Coric hit seven aces and converted five of his 17 break-point chances in the 70-minute encounter.
Sixth-seeded South African Kevin Anderson reached the third round for the first time in five years when he worked hard to beat Mikhail Kukushkin, a qualifier from Kazakhstan, 5-7, 7-6(3), 6-2 in two hours and 13 minutes.
Anderson, who hit 25 aces and won 82 per cent of his first-service points, crucially saved a break point at 4-4 in the second set and later won the first four games of the decider. He also won a three-setter against Kukushkin in January at the Tata Open Maharashtra.
Last week’s BMW Open by FWU runner-up Philipp Kohlschreiber saved one match point to scrape past Spanish No. 11 seed Roberto Bautista Agut, this year’s ASB Classic and Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships winner.
The German saved one match point at 4-5, Ad-Out, in the deciding set of his 6-3, 4-6, 7-5 victory in two hours and 32 minutes for a third-round berth for the first time since 2009.