Jo-Wilfried Tsonga gave his Nitto ATP Finals hopes another jolt on Wednesday when he came back from a set down to beat Next Gen ATP Finals qualifier Karen Khachanov 6-7(2), 6-4, 6-3 at the Erste Bank Open 500 in Vienna.
The Frenchman broke Khachanov to go ahead 5-4 in the second set and cruised in the decider, breaking the 20-year-old Russian twice to advance to the second round.
Tsonga, 2016 Vienna finalist, is currently in 15th place in the Emirates ATP Race To London with 2,055 points, 595 points behind Pablo Carreno Busta, who currently holds the final qualification spot for the Nitto ATP Finals, to be held 12-19 November at The O2 in London.
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The 32-year-old Tsonga will have an opportunity to climb the standings this week, though. Two of the three active players ahead of him in the Race – Sam Querrey and Kevin Anderson – both lost their opening matches in Vienna, and no one has played better indoors this year than Tsonga. He improved to a tour-leading 17-2 indoors this season.
The right-hander will next face VTB Kremlin Cup champion Damir Dzumhur, who beat Lithuanian Ricardas Berankis for the second time in four days, 6-4, 6-2. The Bosnian also prevailed against Berankis in the Moscow final.
Watch Full Match ReplaysTop seed Alexander Zverev needed two hours and 20 minutes to advance but he kept his second-round match with France's Gilles Simon to two sets, 7-6(6), 6-4. The 20-year-old German came back from a break down in both sets to reach his 12th quarter-final of the season. Zverev will meet the winner of Tsonga-Dzumhur.
Earlier in the day, German Philipp Kohlschreiber became the first player to reach the quarter-finals, beating Frenchman Pierre-Hugues Herbert 7-6(3), 6-3. Kohschreiber, a three-time Vienna finalist (2008-09, 2014), won 82 per cent of his first-serve points to improve to 3-1 in his FedEx ATP Head2Head series against Herbert.
Diego Schwartzman set a second-round match with Carreno Busta, who's looking to qualify for London for the first time. Schwartzman prevailed in a back-and-forth contest against Italian No. 1 Fabio Fognini, 6-1, 2-6, 6-2. Carreno Busta beat Schwartzman earlier this year in the US Open quarter-finals during their lone prior FedEx ATP Head2Head meeting.