Friday's quarterfinals of ATP Rolex Masters Monte Carlo did not bring any thrilling three-sets battles, unlike yesterday's epic round of 16 matches, but it delivered two significant upsets. Stefanos Tsitsipas will not win the Monte Carlo's event for the third time in a row, after getting defeated by Taylor Fritz in straight sets. The best of seeds who approached QFs showed surprisingly lacklustre performance, taking up no concrete battle against the well disposed American. Fritz opened the match with a 4-0 lead after just 20 minutes and secured first set with a dominant 6-2 win. Second set was a bit more tight. Fritz was the first one to break again, but Tsitsipas leveled the score, gaining his one and only break in 8th game. It was not enough to fight for decider though, as Fritz broke again in 9th game and advanced into semis with an easy 6-2 6-4 win after just 76 minutes of play.
Andrey Rublev will play against Fritz in Saturday's semifinal. The Russian was a pre-match favorite against the Jan Lennard Struff, who is the big surprise of this tournament. Struff opened the match well, breaking Rublev in first game, but it was all that he showed in this set, as Rublev on 6 games in a row to clinch the set. Both players shared two breaks in second set to set up tiebreak, where the 5th seed won 7-5 to close the match in straight sets.
Holger Rune was a slight favorite before the match of Daniil Medvedev, despite the Russian leading in ATP Race list and being on the strike of 5 tournaments won in a row. Clay is not the favorite surface for Medvedev and he had to play the very hard match against Alexander Zverev yesterday, which took 3:20 hours of intense battle. Rune was rated with an odd 1.74 to win and did not disappoint, scoring a confident 6-3 6-4 victory. First set was decided by only one break happened in 4th game. Both players shared breaks in opening phase of second game, but Rune made the decisive one in 9th game and crossed the line after just 1:40h of play.
Jannik Sinner will play against Rune in the semifinal's match-up between the players of young generation. Sinner did not give any chances for his fellowcountry Lorenzo Musetti, scoring a routine win 6-2 6-2. Musetti achieved his best career's win yesterday while eliminating Novak Djokovic, but had no responses for the brilliant play of Sinner today.
