The ATP Arizona Tennis Classic 2025 continues on Friday, March 14 with its quarterfinal action and some of the mid-ranked players like Alexander Bublik, Nuno Borges and Joao Fonseca will be in action today. Here’s the preview, predictions and tips for these matches from Arizona.
The quarterfinal action will kick-start on Friday with the top seeded and 36th-ranked Nuno Borges taking on surprise entrant and American wildcard Colton Smith.
Borges has had decent form coming into this tournament having made the semifinal at the Auckland Open and the third round at the Australian Open. He had an opening round bye here before defeating Jacob Fearnley in the second round, winning 6-2, 7-5 to enter the quarterfinals.
His opponent, Smith, started the season ranked 365th and is now 261st in the world thanks to his title win in a Challenger tournament in Cleveland and a second round appearance at the Indian Wells Masters last week.
He has already defeated Alexander Shevchenko and Roman Safiullin in successive matches to enter the last eight stage.
We could see an interesting contest here with Smith being a surprise element here who edges out his opponent despite starting out a 6/4 underdog.
Following this, Corentin Moutet will be up against the otherwise struggling Alexander Bublik for a place in the semifinals.
This will be their third meeting, having faced off on the Challenger circuit once before in 2017 and again at the Florence Open in 2022. Both matches were won by Bublik.
Unfortunately though, those were different times for Bublik when he was winning more than he was losing. Right now, in 2025, Bublik has fallen to 82nd in the world and while he defeated Aleksandar Vukic and Rinky Hijikata in the first two rounds, his real test will come against Moutet.
Moutet had made the second round at the Indian Wells Masters last week before falling to Holger Rune. He had earlier made the third round at the Australian Open and now defeated Nikoloz Basilashvili and Pedro Martinez in these two rounds.
This could turn into a close encounter though with the match going into the third set.
The second seeded Flavio Cobolli takes on Kei Nishikori in the third quarterfinal of the day.
It will be the first meeting between 40th-ranked Cobolli and the world number 76 Nishikori, with the two bringing contrasting forms into the encounter.
Cobolli had won just two main draw matches all season before he edged out Elliot Spizzirri in the second round here. Nishikori, on the other hand, was a finalist at the Hong Kong Open and shocked Jaume Munar last week in the Indian Wells Masters opener.
Here too, Nishikori had a couple of clean wins over Luca Nardi and Mikhail Kukushkin and will now start a favourite to win. We could see a straight-set victory for the Japanese player.
In the last match of the day at Phoenix, the highly talented Joao Fonseca will be in action as he faces Hugo Gaston.
Fonseca might not have had a good time at the last couple of tournaments but following his win at the Argentina Open he did make it to the second round at the Indian Wells Masters last week.
An easy loss to Jack Draper followed but he looks to have shrugged it off here with successive wins over Pavel Kotov and Jan-Lennard Struff.
He 3/10 to defeat Gaston but will be aware of what his opponent has done all tournament – beaten Adam Walton and shocked Reilly Opelka in the previous two rounds. And in straight sets at that.
We could see a tight one here that goes the distance – Fonseca to win this in three.
