Nick Kyrgios put on a show on Tuesday as he returned to his winning ways, defeating home favourite Andrey Rublev 6-3, 4-6, 6-4 at the VTB Kremlin Cup in Moscow.
The fifth-seeded wild card, who suffered early exits in Tokyo and Shanghai, fired 25 aces and regularly impressed the Russian crowd with his shotmaking abilities en route to an 87-minute victory. The 23-year-old improves to 25-13 this season after denying Rublev a first victory in four appearances at the ATP World Tour 250 tournament.
Kyrgios will face Mirza Basic for a place in the quarter-finals. Earlier in the day, Basic overcame Malek Jaziri of Tunisia 7-6(4), 6-2. World No. 37 Kyrgios and Basic have never met at tour level.
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Belarusian qualifier Egor Gerasimov struck 12 aces and lost just nine of his first-service points (36/45) in a 6-1, 6-7(5), 6-2 victory over defending champion Damir Dzumhur, the sixth seed from Bosnia and Herzegovina. He will next challenge Frenchman Benoit Paire, who overcame Mischa Zverev of Germany 7-6(6), 2-6, 6-1.
Andreas Seppi notched his third victory over Martin Klizan in four FedEx ATP Head2Head meetings, upsetting the eighth seed 6-1, 7-6(6). The Italian will meet Pierre-Hugues Herbert or Kazakh qualifier Alexander Bublik in the second round.
Russian Evgeny Donskoy saved four set points at 5/6, 6/7, 8/9 and 9/10 in the second set tie-break en route to beating 2013 runner-up Mikhail Kukushkin of Kazakhstan 6-4, 7-6(10) in one hour and 52 minutes. Donskoy, the 2015 Moscow semi-finalist, will next play fourth-seeded Serbian Filip Krajinovic.
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