With the top half of the quarterfinal set on the third day of the German Open, the fourth day set the bottom half. The day featured both seeded players—Guillermo Garcia-Lopez and Martin Klizan—advancing without much resistance. The other two spots were filled by Stephane Robert and Daniel Gimeno-Traver.
The results
In the opening match, Inigo Cervantes was looking to build on his first round upset of Alexander Zverev. While the Spaniard had his chances, the match paradigm became him missing chance after chance to gain an advantage in this contest. He lost to Frenchman Robert, 7-5, 4-6, 6-1. The opening set saw Cervantes take a 5-4 lead with set point on his racket. Battling through, Robert not only survived set point but broke back in that game to get back on serve. The Frenchman then went up a break himself—breaking at 15.
Things weren’t over yet, though, as Cervantes held three break points at 0-40 to send the set to a tiebreak. That inability to get one of those points to go his way cost him, and his opponent—who already had ten years on him—took a one set lead. The 26-year-old responded by winning the second set with three breaks, but the third set, like the first, came with a botched 0-40 lead that cost him.
From the very first game of his routine 6-2, 6-2 win, Garcia-Lopez showed that this was his match to dominate. The 33-year-old opened with a break at 30; Grega Zemlja was able to push the next game to five deuces—with two unsuccessful break point chances—but lady luck was not on his side. His Spanish adversary held and broke again to lead 3-0.
After a rough start, things began to pick up for the Slovenian as he got on the board with a break of his own, at 15. That was, however, where his burst of luck ran out. Garcia-Lopez got another break at 4-2 and ran away with the match. The second set began with another double break from the world number 56 en route to another 3-0 lead. Giving up only three points on serve in the set is evidence of how well he was playing. Meanwhile, his opponent was crushed on second serves—winning only 37% of them.
Louis Wessels had a lot going for him heading into the match; he's from the home country, he's the wildcard who made it to the round of 16, and he's only 17-years-old. However, he also had 27-year-old seventh seed Klizan standing in his way. The Slovak pasted his young opponent, 6-1, 6-1, in just 50 minutes.
He also totaled five breaks in the match—which can be credited to his winning of every second return point he saw except for one. While the score seems exceptionally lopsided, Wessels could have had a chance if he had better luck on any of his four break point chances. Nonetheless, he played as well as one could hope for someone who still plays on the Juniors tour.
The round of 16 concluded with a marathon of a match. After three hours, seven minutes of action, Gimeno-Traver defeated Daniil Medvedev, 5-7, 7-6(4), 7-6(2). Medvedev won more points (140 to 137), but he couldn't get the job done in the tiebreaks. He did, however, put on quite the show saving two match points at 15-40 with the score at 4-5. Four more in the tiebreak just proved to be too much for the 20-year-old.