Cameron Norrie’s run at the Madrid Open ended with a fourth-round loss against world number one Jannik Sinner.
Norrie had never played a competitive match against Sinner before but admitted ahead of the contest that the Italian “rips me up and smokes me” in practice.
Norrie battled hard to land blows on the top seed at the Caja Magica but was able to do so only occasionally as Sinner’s unbeaten streak reached 20 matches with a 6-2 7-5 victory.
Sinner, who has never been beyond the quarter-finals in Madrid, said on Sky Sports: “We know each other quite well, we practised a lot in the last tournaments, so we both kind of knew what to expect. “I felt like I was serving quite well today in the important moments. This surface is very, very different than all the other surfaces so it’s very tough to get the right feedback and sometimes you feel like you’re not playing your best.
“But I’m very happy to be here in the quarters again. It’s a tournament I haven’t played a lot so it means a lot to me.”
The consolation for British number one Norrie, who was close to dropping out of the top 100 a year ago, is that he is set to return to the top 20 next week.
Sinner is looking to make history by winning a fifth consecutive Masters 1000 title but he has admitted he does not find the conditions in Madrid easy and he is yet to hit top form in the Spanish capital.
However, so much better is he than the rest of the field that Sinner does not need to be at his peak to win most matches.
He was on cruise control in the opening set, the depth and relentlessness of his hitting too good for Norrie as he won five games in a row. Norrie tried everything in an attempt to disrupt Sinner’s rhythm, including an underarm serve in the fifth game of the second set.
The only blip for Sinner came when he was broken to love in the next game to allow Norrie to get back on level terms but the British number one dropped serve again at 5-5 and that proved the decisive blow.
Sinner could face new Spanish wonderkid Rafael Jodar next, and the world number one called for a change to the schedule in Madrid after the 19-year-old finished his third-round match at close to 1am on Monday morning.
The two-match night session in the Spanish capital does not begin until 8pm, and Sinner said: “For our body and mind, going on court at 11pm and you play at midnight, past midnight, it’s not easy. “Then also, even if you have a day off, the fans they see only us on court, and then we finish at 1.15am. But then you have press conference, recovery, eating, treatment, you don’t go to bed until 4 or 5am. It messes up the whole day. So I think we can do better, definitely.”
Also through to the last eight is in-form young Frenchman Arthur Fils, one of the players who will look to challenge Sinner in the absence of Carlos Alcaraz, with the 21st seed beating Tomas Martin Etcheverry 6-3 6-4. Fils next faces Czech Jiri Lehecka, who upset sixth seed Lorenzo Musetti 6-3 6-3, while, in the women’s event, Mirra Andreeva battled through to the semi-finals with a 7-6 (1) 6-3 victory over Leylah Fernandez to give herself an early 19th birthday present.