Borna Coric reaches Quarter-Finals at Winston-Salem Open

Borna Coric battled in a hard-fought victory Wednesday at the Winston-Salem Open to reach his sixth tour-level quarter-final this year.

The 26-year-old Croatian outlasted wild card Michael Mmoh 6-4, 6-7(3), 6-3 in a slugfest of two hours, 47 minutes. Coric served up 11 aces and hit the ball with confidence to reach the quarter-finals. He will face Argentine Juan Manuel Cerundolo next up. World No. 29 Coric has played his best tennis under pressure this week. He has saved 16 of 17 break points faced across two matches.

The match started off with Coric holding his serve well throughout and keeping Mmoh in check. Coric earned a break against the American at 4-4. He had a relatively easy service game to close out the first set.

Coric struggled with pace in the second set, where a lot of his dropshots were missing. Mmoh fought back to have his way with dictating points bringing it to a tiebreak in the second. 

Nevertheless, Coric had seen enough and felt the pressure closing in, which led him to crank it up another notch. As the Croatian felt free to serve up missiles, he doubled down on his approach leaving Mmoh in the dust. He closed out the third set with a comfortable 6-3 game. 

“I started to play better in the second set. He was serving really, really big and I didn’t have a chance to break him,” Coric said. “Overall I thought it was a good match from my side and also from his side. I’m very happy with my level of tennis and I hopefully I can keep on getting better.”

Coric is aiming for his fourth tour-level title and first since last year’s Cinderella run at the Cincinnati Open. He is making his third appearance in Winston-Salem, where he has reached the last eight twice (2015, 2017) respectively. His quarter-final match against Cerundolo will mark his first with the Argentine. Cerundolo put away Omni Kumar 7-5, 6-3 in third round.

“I need to check him out a bit. I did watch him play a couple of times. But I’ve never watched him play where I was focused on his game,” Coric said. “Need to check him out on YouTube and Tennis TV to see how he plays and then decide all of my game plans.”

Stay tuned for more breaking tennis coverage and updates.

Featured Image courtesy of Winston-Salem Open

You can “Like” The Game Haus on Facebook and “Follow” us on Twitter for more sports, esports articles from myself and other great TGH writers.

“From Our Haus to yours”