Backed into a corner, Carlos Alcaraz came out swinging.
For an hour and a more, he had played second fiddle to Grigor Dimitrov; now, trailing by a set and a break, he was deep in last-chance saloon territory.
There are few more electrifying sights in tennis than Alcaraz in full flight, and as he unleashed a sequence of three mighty forehands to get back on serve, emitting a full-blooded roar of “Vamos!” into the night sky, it felt like a tipping point. Having apparently turned a corner earlier this month in Indian Wells, where he looked back to his powerful and acrobatic best as he ended an eight-month title drought, the 20-year-old Spaniard was surely on his way.
Except he wasn’t.
An ace carried Dimitrov within a game of repeating his victory over Alcaraz at last October’s Shanghai Masters, a final flourish of devastating shot-making earned him a fourth and final break, and suddenly the 32-year-old Bulgarian had a second straight win over the Wimbledon champion and a semi-final appointment with Alexander Zverev, who earlier defeated Hungary’s Fabian Marozsan 6-3, 7-5.
“Against him, you cannot really let him hit the ball,” said Dimitrov, the 11th seed, after his 6-2, 6-4 victory. “I think we saw what happened even when I was up a break in the second set, the game he broke me. It was straight up four forehands. Absolutely nothing I could have done.
“Can I get mad? Yeah, I can. But there was no reason for me to kind of drift away. I just had to stay patient. I was aware of what was happening, how it was happening, and I knew that if I had another chance and opportunity, I could really step in, and that would give me another opportunity.
“That’s what happened, I think, in the last game. I didn’t pull back. I kept on believing in the game that I was playing and again, the execution was very good.”
On a night when Dimitrov combined relentless aggression and artistry with near-flawless consistency, that felt like an understatement. The Bulgarian was sensational, suffocating Alcaraz’s challenge with his early ball-striking and eagerness to close down the net, forever keeping the world No 2 on the move to deny him time and breathing space.
For Alcaraz, who came into the contest on a nine-match winning streak, it was a chastening experience. Bidding to become the first man to win the “sunshine double” of Indian Wells and Miami since Roger Federer in 2017, the top seed dropped a combined total of just 15 games en route to the quarter-finals, but could find no answer to an opponent whose tactics and execution touched perfection.
“I have a lot of frustrations right now, because he made me feel like I’m 13 years old,” said Alcaraz. “It was crazy. I was talking to my team, saying that I don’t know what I have to do, I don’t know his weakness.
“His game was perfect.”