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Vinay Nayudu
Doha
The 26th edition of the Qatar ExxonMobil Open is turning out to be disastrous for the seeded players, but not for World No. 5 and top seed Dominic Thiem, who continued to stay on course and take his appointed place in the quarter-finals with a straight sets win over Slovenian Aljaz Bedene on Wednesday.
With cool winds at the Khalifa International Tennis & Squash Complex making fans brave the chill, the Austrian Thiem provided enough to warm the hearts as he outclassed Bedene 7-5, 6-4 and make the last eight of his first tournament of the 2018 season.
Bedene, who switched to Slovenia from Great Britain just last month, didn't have much change in fortunes in the match except for a good attempt in the opening set against the top gun.
On his part, Thiem had 15 break points, including 10 in the second set but he converted only three of those opportunities.
Thiem was, however, pleased to have cleared the hurdle."The first set was good I converted break points fine," said Thiem, who was two-for-five on break points in the opener."But in the second set, I think I missed too many chances. In general, I'm very happy," said the 24-year-old.
Unlike Thiem, Day Three of the tournament wasn't as pleasing for the other seeds Spaniards Fernando Verdasco (7) and Feliciano Lopez (8), who fell by the wayside losing to Russian Andrey Rublev and qualifier Mirza Basic of Bosnia & Herzegovina respectively.
The 20-year-old Rublev improved his record to 2-1 against Verdasco winning 6-4, 3-6, 6-4 saving seven of 11 break points to book the next clash against Croatia's Borna Coric.
The 21-year-old Coric, who knocked out second seed and World No. 10 Pablo Carreno Busta in the first round, routed Georgia's Nikoloz Basilashvili, 6-1, 6-3 breaking his opponent five times.
Also joining the last eight brigade was Peter Gojowczyk of Germany, who had shown the exit to 6th seed Filip Krajinovic of Serbia (6-4, 6-1) in a late match on Tuesday.
The 28-year-old and 60th ranked German set aside Italian Matteo Berrettini 6-2, 6-2 and will meet the winner of Gael Monfils (FRA) and Jan-Lennard Struff (GER) match which was going on at the time of going to the press.
Thiem will play fifth-seeded Frenchman Richard Gasquet or Greek qualifier Stefanos Tsitsipas, who were to play the final evening match on Wednesday.
