India's Ramkumar Ramanathan registered the biggest win of his career with a 6-3, 6-2 second round upset of top seed and World No. 8 Dominic Thiem at the Antalya Open on Tuesday.
Ramkumar Ramanathan, ranked 222 in the world, reached only his second ATP quarterfinal with the victory over the Austrian. Ramkumar's previous best performance was a quarterfinal appearance at the 2016 edition of Chennai Open.
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The Chennai lad defeated World No. 68 Rogerio Dutra Silva of Brazil in straight sets in the first round and will face Cyprus' Marcos Baghdatis for a place in the semifinal.
With a poor 48 first serve percentage, Thiem didn't have much going for him. Ramkumar, for his part, had a 65 percent success rate with his first serve and that meant the Austrian had just one breakpoint opportunity throughout the game.
Thiem made it into the French Open last four, beating Novak Djokovic in straight sets in the quarter-finals before losing to eventual winner Rafael Nadal.
However, he arrived in Turkey after a second-round loss to Robin Haase last week on grass in Halle.
The Austrian was appearing in Turkey to help prepare for the third Grand Slam of the year at Wimbledon which starts on Monday.
Ramanathan had only played in one ATP tour event this year before heading to Turkey, and that was at home in Chennai in January.
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