MONTREAL: Jannik Sinner jumped out of the blocks in his first ATP match since Wimbledon as the defending champion defeated Borna Coric 6-2, 6-4 at the Montreal Masters on Thursday.
The Italian world number one last played a month ago in the quarter-finals of the All-England Club, where he was recovering from an illness during his loss to Daniil Medvedev.
Sinner missed the Olympics due to angina and came to Canada a week ago to get used to the wrestling game again.
It worked well as he and Britain’s Jack Draper reached the quarter-finals of the doubles.
“Playing doubles helped bring back the feeling of the match,” Sinner said after his 96-minute defeat of Croatia’s Coric. “I’m hitting the ball pretty clean and I’m trying to get better every day.
The 22-year-old Australian Open champion described his singles start as “positive”.
“I’m very happy with the performance,” he said. I had to save a break point in the second set – if he had managed that, the match could have potentially changed.”
“I had a good mindset today. I’ll try to keep it going.”
German second seed Alexander Zverev dominated his progress to the third round, while a trio of other seeds went down to defeat.
Zverev crushed Australia’s Jordan Thompson 6-1, 6-1 after making the difficult transition from the Paris Olympic clay to the fast North American hard court.
The 2017 champion in Canada won as third seed Medvedev, eighth seed Stefanos Tsitsipas and 10th seed Tommy Paul all lost.
Seeded winners included No. 5 Casper Ruud, who beat James Duckworth 6-2, 6-7 (5/7), 6-3, and No. 13 Dane Holger Rune, who beat Pablo Carren Busta 6-1, 6-3.
Zverev, a quarterfinalist in Paris, won his league-leading 48th match of the season.
“You only have two or three practices, plus it’s a six-hour time difference (from the Olympics),” he said. “It’s extremely difficult to go straight from clay to cement – you just can’t compare the conditions.
“I’m happy to have advanced, but it’s not easy to play the Masters right away. That’s why there were a few exits from the best.”
Medvedev was stunned when Alejandro Davidovich Fokina staged a reset after dropping the second set to claim a 6-4, 1-6, 6-2 win.
“It wasn’t easy for me,” said the 42nd winner. “It was not an easy year for me.
Former world number four Kei Nishikori advanced to the third round of the Masters for the first time in three years when she beat eighth seed Tsitsipas 6-4, 6-4 in just 78 minutes.
Japan’s former US Open finalist, who has had several seasons of hip injury drama, plays with a protected ranking of 576 but is back on the scene this week.
Nišikori (2016) and Tsitsipas (2018) played in the Canadian final, with the Asian claiming his first top-20 match win since 2021.
“It was a great win for me. It means a lot to beat Stef,” said Nishikori.
Fifth seed Andrey Rublev equaled his Canadian career high by reaching the third round after defeating Tomas Martin Etcheverry 7-6 (7/3), 6-2.
He next faces Brandon Nakashima, who beat tenth-time Olympic double medalist Paul 6-2, 6-7 (5/7), 6-1 with nine aces and five breaks of serve.
Rublev, who infamously dissolved several times during the 2024 matches, kept his cool in the victory.
