Two American men will meet on Friday with a place in the Cincinnati Open semifinals on the line.
Kalshi traders give Fritz, the top ranked player remaining in the men's draw, the edge at 63%. Nakashima holds odds of 37% at the time of writing.
The match is scheduled to take place no sooner than 3:00pm ET on Friday.
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What’s at stake
Though he entered the tournament as the No. 6 seed, the draw has opened dramatically around Taylor Fritz, leaving him as the top ranked player and tournament favorite.
The 28-year old, who has won one Masters 1000 level title in his career, sits on the edge of the world’s top-10 in the live-ranking, with the opportunity to jump as high as world No. 5 should he come away with the title.
Nakashima on the other hand is seeking to continue a significant string of recent success which has seen him make the semifinals and finals in each of his last two American hard court events.
The recent success has pushed him up to a new career-high live-ranking of No. 19 with a chance to enter the top-15 with a victory over Fritz.
The road to the quarterfinals
After bowing out in his first match in Montreal, Fritz has breezed through his first three matches back on home soil, winning each in straight sets and spending no more than 90 minutes on court in any of the contests.
On the other hand, Nakashima has been forced to expend considerably more energy, needing more than seven hours on court. The bulk of that time has come in his last two matches, in which he needed three sets to edge past Nuno Borges and No. 4 seed Daniil Medvedev.
In his match against Medvedev, Nakashima had to save match points in order to secure victory.
Fritz leads the head-to-head
Excluding a 2019 exhibition, Taylor Fritz owns a 4-1 record head-to-head against his fellow American.
Half of those wins have come this year, with Fritz earning a comfortable 6-3, 6-4 victory in Dallas back in February and a three-set win over Nakashima earlier this month in the semifinals at the ATP 500 level event in Washington, D.C.
While he's only found a way to win one non-exhibition match against Fritz, Nakashima's lone victory has some significance. The win came against the higher-ranked player in 2024 in Cincinnati, where he narrowly edged out Fritz in a match tiebreak.
Though their latest match saw breaks in all three sets, the pair could be due for a tight encounter. Each is ranked inside the top-10 by serve rating and inside the top-15 for percentage of service games won, meaning returners rarely have a lot of success.
Both players have been broken serving just one time in their first three matches at the event this year.
Title chances
Prior to taking the court on Friday, Fritz is among the tournament favorites, priced at 34% to take home his second ever Masters 1000 title.
Meanwhile, Nakashima, who has only won one ATP tournament in his career, is priced at 9%.
Other title contenders include France's Arthur Fils at 36% and Italian Flavio Cobolli at 13%.
Who is next up - Tiafoe and Musetti
The American pair will take the court in the first quarterfinal on Friday, with the winner set to take on the winner of the matchup featuring Frances Tiafoe and Lorenzo Musetti.
At the time of writing, Kalshi traders price Musetti at 51% and Tiafoe at 49%.
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