“Oh, yeah?”

Ben Shelton hadn’t looked at the draw after his latest victory Tuesday in Shanghai, but soon found out another crack at world No. 1 Jannik Sinner awaits.

The left-hander defeated Roberto Carballes Baena, 6-3, 6-4, to line up the fourth-round encounter. Shelton did not face a break point, as he won 35 of his 38 first-serve points.

“I thought I served extremely well, probably my best serving day this year. I thought I did a good job capitalizing in big moments to get my breaks,” Shelton assessed with media. “As a big server, if you can serve as accurately as I did today, and break once a set, you’re in a pretty good position.

“I like the way that my game is coming together.”

Shelton knocked out Sinner at this very stage of the Rolex Shanghai Masters a year ago. The Italian has since gone on to win two majors and reach world No, 1, amid an anti-doping case, and taken three consecutive meetings with the former NCAA champion.

All of those defeats to Sinner have straight-set eliminations, most recently in the round of 16 at Wimbledon. Shelton is focused on “living in the moment”, though admits to occasionally looking back on the good times that rolled.

“Great memories from that match last year, I probably watched the tape of that a couple times so far this year,” said Shelton. “I’m really looking forward to it, that will be fun.”

“It’s always a big opportunity whenever you get to play one of the best two or three players in the world.”

The 21-year-old is 1-4 against Top 10 opponents this season, with his lone victory coming a couple weeks ago over world No. 5 Daniil Medvedev at the Laver Cup. Shelton is bidding to become the first player to oust Sinner before the quarterfinal stage of an event in 2024.

“Obviously, huge serve and huge forehand. He has improved a lot, so hopefully I will be ready,” Sinner said when asked about the potential matchup with the No. 16 seed Sunday.

Meanwhile, seventh seed Taylor Fritz will meet 12th seed Holger Rune for a quarterfinal berth after both joined Shelton in advancing. Fritz defeated qualifier Yosuke Watanuki, 6-3, 6-4, while Rune secured a 6-4, 7-5 victory over 33rd seed Jiri Lehecka.

Flavio Cobolli’s Rolex Shanghai Masters victory over Stan Wawrinka was marred by a scoring error from chair umpire Carlos Bernades early in the third set, one that came in a pivotal game in his 6-7 (6), 7-6 (4), 6-3 comeback.

Social media lit up over the mistake, which occurred when the 22-year-old Italian was returning serve up 1-0 on Wawinka, a former world No. 3 aged 39:

Cobolli and Wawrinka split the first two points of the game but Bernades, who is set to end his 40-year career as a referee at the end of the 2024 season, inaccurately logged the score as 0-30 rather than 15-15. Neither the 28th-seeded Cobolli nor Wawrinka—nor, seemingly, anyone in the crowd—noticed the mistake, and play continued as normal.

Cobolli ultimately won the game, securing the lone break of the two-and-a-half-hour match to book a third-round meeting with former world No. 1 Novak Djokovic.

Former Wimbledon finalist Nick Kyrgios hit out at the incident on Twitter/X, declaring Bernardes “should of [sic] been fired years ago”:

Kyrgios had his own (albeit very different) run-in with the longtime Brazilian umpire at the 2022 Miami Open, where the Aussie was dealt numerous penalties for unsportsmanlike conduct—amassing $35,000 in fines.

For their parts, Cobolli and Wawrinka shared a warm exchange at net and are yet to address the scoring mishap.

“He is a legend of our sport,” Cobolli said after the match. “It was a pleasure to play with Stan on this court.”