Just four days after his Davis Cup tie-clinching, four-set victory over Jack Sock completed a comeback from 0-2, Borna Coric looked to upset another top 30 player in Gael Monfils. Unfortunately for the Croatian sensation, his luck on US soil ran out in the third round of the Citi Open. His travel was kept to a minimum, (Portland is only a couple-hour flight away from Washington DC), but so was his success. Monfils came away with a clinical straight set defeat, 6-2, 6-3, in a match lasting just 54 minutes.
Monfils comes out hot
Experience reigned supreme in the first game. Monfils kicked off the match with a break at love. Some big serving—including two aces—consolidated the break, and the second seed was off to the races. After seeing just one point in the first two games, Coric held at love to get on the board, 1-2. The dominance continued for the Frenchman in the next game as he held at love, but he wasn't done yet.
At 30-30 in the fifth game, Coric made a forehand error to give his opponent another chance to break; that chance wouldn't get away from the 29-year-old as the young Croatian hit another forehand awry to give up another break. One more hold at 30 consolidated a second break, and Monfils lead, 5-1. The sixteenth seed was able to get his second hold—also at love—to delay his inevitable set loss. Three straight aces gave Monfils triple set point at 40-0; two of which were saved, however, one too many backhand errors ended the set.
The first set saw Coric performing like a bad window washer: he was very streaky. While was broken twice, he also held in dominant fashion at love twice. Monfils, in stark contrast, looked untouchable on his serve. With more aces than points given up (six to five), he took the set in just 22 minutes.
Monfils' serve keeps cooking
While not much of an accomplishment, Coric was able to start the second set better than he did the first. A hold at 15 kept the teenager from starting out behind in the set. Nevertheless, Monfils’ serving remained at an extremely high level; three aces with no returned serves knotted the set score up at 1-apiece. The next two games featured a much more human Monfils, but not that much more human. Neither player broke serve until, at 2-2, Coric’s play began to waver.
At 15-30, the Croatian youngster slapped a backhand into the net. That set up two break points for his French adversary: the first was saved after a big serve down the T was returned long. One save was all the world number 53 had in him at the moment. Another shot into the net sent the game to its end. Monfils followed his break with a routine hold at 15 to take a 4-2 lead. To this point, Coric had only won seven return points all match—not even coming close to a break. After another hold from the Croatian, Monfils fired off three more aces en route to another love hold. His dominant serve gave him some momentum heading into the next game—where he jumped out to a 0-40 lead. With three match points, the Frenchman returned the next serve into the net, but the point after would be the last. The second match point completed the rout on a Coric backhand driven long.
It's difficult to convey just how unstoppable Monfils looked; he was serving like John Isner while returning like he did against Rafael Nadal in Monte Carlo. Despite getting just 59 percent of his first serves in, he won 22 of 23 first serve points. His twelve aces accounted for 23 percent of his total points won. And when he wasn't blistering serves past his opponent, he was breaking serves with ease. Of course, some of that can be put on Coric's inconsistency—which is evident by his 23 unforced errors—but this was really a great performance by one of tennis' greatest performers.
On his comeback from another injury, Monfils will look to build on his third round victory over Coric with another big showing in the quarterfinal. He will meet the winner of world number 23 Alexandr Dolgopolov - world number 29 Sam Querrey. Monfils has no career losses to either player, while he is 1-0 against Querrey and 3-0 against Dolgopolov. If the Frenchman plays up to his second seed billing like he did today, his first ATP title of 2016 might not be very far away.