INDIAN WELLS — Former Olympic champion Belinda Bencic stunned third-seeded American Coco Gauff, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4, on Wednesday while Australian Open champion Madison Keys rallied to reach the quarterfinals of the BNP Paribas Open.
On the men’s side, Britain’s Jack Draper beat third-seeded Taylor Fritz, 7-5, 6-4, while second-seeded Carlos Alcaraz continued his dominant run and 11th-seeded Ben Shelton advanced.
Bencic, a 28-year-old wild card who gave birth to daughter Bella in April of last year and just returned to competition in October, won 69% of her first-serve points in a match that lasted 2 hours, 20 minutes.
Bencic, from Switzerland, returned the favor from the Australian Open in January, when Gauff won after dropping the first set. The defeat came the day before Gauff’s 21st birthday as the 2023 U.S. Open champion was broken at 4-4 in the final set after going up 40-0.
“Obviously, this is why you are practicing and working hard all your life, so it’s super nice to play in this kind of atmosphere,” Bencic said in her on-court interview. “The way you cheered before the match … I had chills and goosebumps and I kind of just put the serve into the court because I was so nervous.”
Bencic’s 16-4 overall record this year includes her ninth career title last month in Abu Dhabi. Her victory over Gauff was her second top-five win of 2025, following an upset of Elena Rybakina in the Abu Dhabi semifinals.
Gauff started aggressively and committed five double faults in the first set, including three in one game but was broken only once en route to wrapping up the set in 51 minutes when Bencic sent a forehand wide.
But Bencic was firing on all cylinders in the second set and, despite twice requiring medical attention for foot and hand issues, built a 4-1 lead before securing it when Gauff returned a serve into the net.
Bencic took another medical timeout before the deciding set to have a hand blister tended to.
Gauff struggled with her serve throughout the tournament and had eight double faults against Bencic, with only four aces.
Bencic next faces Keys, who rallied for a 4-6, 7-6 (7), 6-3 victory over 19th-seeded Donna Vekic.
The 30-year-old American, seeded No. 3, extended her winning streak to 15 matches after trailing 5-3 and being two points from defeat in the second set.
“Sometimes after a close tiebreaker and winning the set and kind of having a little bit of … a surge of energy and everything, sometimes you can get almost a little bit too amped,” Keys said. “So I just wanted to try to play really tough the first game and just try to get the thing that I was doing well in order to close out that set.”
Keys did exactly that, taking the momentum from the tiebreak and breaking Vekic to open the third. She closed out the comeback win with one of her lethal forehands to wild cheers from the home fans.
Top-seeded Aryna Sabalenka cruised to a 6-1, 6-2 victory over Sonay Kartal, who was facing an opponent ranked in the top 10 for the first time. Sabalenka will meet Liudmila Samsonova in the quarterfinals.
Kartal, from Great Britain, entered the main draw as a “lucky loser” but made an eye-catching run to the fourth round, beating 16th-seed Beatriz Haddad Maia along the way.
For a brief moment, it seemed as if Kartal could cause another stunning upset as she broke the three-time Grand Slam winner in the first game. The early setback led to Sabalenka receiving a swift code violation as she was reprimanded for an audible obscenity.
But Sabalenka quickly regrouped to blow Kartal away. The Brit had no answer for Sabalenka, who won all six of the following games to take a set lead. Sabalenka refused to let up in the second set, forcing Kartal to sprint around the court in a vain attempt to withstand the barrage and wrapping up the victory in a little over an hour.
Draper eliminating Fritz, the 2022 Indian Wells champion, left Ben Shelton as the lone American man to reach the quarterfinals.
“I played a really high-level match,” said Draper, a U.S. Open semifinalist. “I struggled here in the past with my serve, but I thought that I served great today, and I think that put a lot of pressure on him.”
Up next for Draper is the 11th-seeded Shelton, who became the youngest American man since Andy Roddick in 2004 to reach the final eight here by beating 23-year-old American Brandon Nakashima.
The 22-year-old Shelton cruised in the second set of a 7-6 (6), 6-1 victory. After a 61-minute opening set, he took a 5-0 lead in just 20 minutes in the deciding set.
Alcaraz hasn’t dropped a set on his way to the quarterfinals. The four-time Grand Slam champion breezed to a 6-1, 6-1 victory over No. 14 seed Grigor Dimitrov.
Alcaraz, who is bidding to become the third man to win the event three times in a row after Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic, handled the blustery conditions far better than his opponent.
Dimitrov was showing signs of fatigue from his 3-hour third-round match earlier in the week and could do little to stop the world No. 3.
“Today with the conditions, it was really tough for us both. I had to survive,” Alcaraz told the ATP Tour. “I always say in these conditions, you have to survive no matter what. I’m very happy that I was able to play long rallies. I got a good rhythm, even with the conditions, so I’m just really happy to get through.”
Alcaraz did not face a break point in the first set as Dimitrov scraped together a handful of winners against more than a dozen unforced errors.
Alcaraz dropped only four of his first-serve points in the second set and snuffed out the three break point chances Dimitrov had in the fifth game.
He next faces Argentina’s Francisco Cerundolo, who topped Australian Alex De Minaur, 7-5, 6-3.