Montreal: Andy Murray had the worst possible outing in the Montreal Masters on Thursday as he lost his match to Ernests Gulbis of Latvia whereas Rafael Nadal managed to get past his Polish counterpart in Jerzy Janowicz to make it to the quarter-finals of the tournament. With this defeat, Murray’s winning streak of 13 matches was brought to an end.
Murray has won all his past five encounters against Gulbis, but this time he slumped to a 4-6, 3-6 defeat at his hands. It took less than 90 minutes for 38th Rank Gulbis to wind up the match and to make it to the third quarter-final of his career at the Masters 1000 level.
Meanwhile in the other match of this tournament, Spaniard Rafael Nadal managed to win his tussle against the 15th seeded Polish Janowicz 7-6 (8/6), 6-4 to reach the last eight. Nadal was hitting the court for the first time in seven weeks, since he lost in first round of Wimbledon to Belgian Steve Darcis. It took him one hour and 45 minutes to clinch this tie, which also saw a 68 minute long first set.
In the yet another important tie of the Montreal Masters, Novak Djokovic struggled to win his pre-quarterfinal match against the 66th ranked Denis Istomin. The top seed Serb lost his opening set but bounced back well to register a win by 2-6, 6-4, 6-4.
Meanwhile it was quite a great day for the host Canada, as the Wild card Vasek Pospisil shocked fifth seed Tomas Berdych 7-5, 2-6, 7-6 (7/5) while 11th seed Milos Raonic blasted former US Open champ Juan Martin del Potro 7-5, 6-4.