Big guns fall at Indian Wells

World number two Murray let his commanding lead evaporate on a warm, windy day at Indian Wells and needed to break the Argentine left-hander in the 12th game just to force the tiebreaker, which Delbonis won 7-3. Delbonis took advantage of a series of Murray errors to run off the last five points of the decider to end the two hour, 46-minute struggle. 

Delbonis, who reached the quarter-finals this year in Rio and Sao Paulo, varied his strategy against Murray and took advantage of some weakness in the Scot’s serve. Murray failed to register an ace and won less than 50 percent of his second serves. 

Delbonis will meet Frenchman Gael Monfils in the fourth round after the 13th seed dispatched Spain’s Albert Ramos-Vinolas 6-1 6-3. In another day match, 12th seed Milos Raonic of Canada advanced to the fourth round 6-3 3-0 when Bernard Tomic retired in the second set. Belgian David Goffin defeated Argentine Guido Pella 4-6 6-3 6-2 and will next meet Stan Wawrinka after the Swiss third seed beat Russian Andrey Kuznetsov 6-4 7-6(5).

Swiss seventh seed Belinda Bencic was stunned by Slovakia’s Magdalena Rybarikova while former champion Ana Ivanovic was also sent packing in the third round of the BNP Paribas Open. The 97th-ranked Rybarikova, who eliminated 31st seed Daria Gavrilova in her previous match, got by the powerful Bencic 6-4 3-6 6-3 while Czech Karolina Pliskova dumped former Serbian world number one Ivanovic 6-2 6-0 in 49 minutes.