Alex de Minaur has been pushed to the limit, before breaking the resistance of French qualifier Quentin Halys and advancing to his second consecutive China Open quarter-final.
The Australian, who has had a see-sawing second half of the year, lost the first set in Beijing on Saturday, before grinding his way back into the match.
After winning the first set 6-3, Halys opened up a 5-3 lead in the second and was serving for the match, before de Minaur rallied to break back, then clinch a neck-and-neck tiebreak 7-5 to set up a decider.
The third set was another close affair, before the 'Demon' was able to break at 5-5 and secure a hard-fought 3-6 7-6 (7-5) 7-5 win in two hours 47 minutes.
Victory evened up their head-to-head record at 2-2 and put de Minaur into the quarters, where the world No.10 will play Andrey Rublev, currently ranked No.20 in the world, but a former top-10 player himself.
Rublev was also pushed to the limit before beating fellow Russian Roman Safiullin 6-2 3-6 6-4.
De Minaur will be looking to repeat or better last year's performance at the ATP 500 event, when he made the semi-finals before losing to then world No.1 Jannik Sinner.
It has been an up-and-down year for de Minaur, who started 2026 off well by reaching the last eight at the Australian Open.
He continued that momentum into February, when he won the ATP 500 event in Rotterdam.
De Minaur followed that by reaching the French Open third round and fourth round at Wimbledon, before disappointingly bowing out in the second round of the US Open in September.
However, he bounced back impressively by steering Australia to victory over Poland in their Davis Cup clash in Brisbane, before beating in-from German Alexander Zverev at the Laver Cup in London.
Zverev, who has won two majors this year - at Roland Garros in June and Flushing Meadows in September - is top seed in Beijing and was scheduled to play China's Juncheng Shang later on Saturday.
