Portugal’s Joao Sousa recorded the fourth Top 10 victory of his career (4-26 lifetime) on Friday for a place in the Miami Open presented by Itau third round. The 29-year-old required 61 minutes to beat Belgium’s David Goffin, currently No. 9 in the ATP Rankings, 6-0, 6-1.
“I think I played a great match today," said Sousa. "I was able to play my best tennis from the beginning. For sure, David was not able to play his best tennis today. I know how tough it is coming from an injury that he had a few weeks ago. I'm really happy that I was able to play great tennis. It's not easy to play against these kinds of players. They are very good. So yeah I'm very happy I can enjoy this victory a lot today.”
Sousa won the last 15 points of the first set against Goffin, who is returning from an eye injury sustained during the ABN Amro World Tennis Tournament in February and had won all four of their previous FedEx ATP Head2Head meetings. Sousa, now one away from 150 victories, will next challenge American Jared Donaldson or No. 25 seed Feliciano Lopez of Spain. Two weeks ago, Sousa beat No. 5-ranked Alexander Zverev en route to the BNP Paribas Open third round.
“It's great. I've been playing very good tennis for the past two weeks. As I say, I played one of my best matches of my career today. Even if David was not very well... I'm enjoying playing tennis a lot. It is great to play against these kinds of guys and try to win, and I was able to do it for the past two weeks. Hopefully, I can keep playing good tennis and keep providing some surprises.”
Later today, second-seeded Croatian Marin Cilic takes on Pierre-Hugues Herbert of France and third seed Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria faces Germany’s Maximilian Marterer.
