Three-times former champion Andy Roddick had a bumpy ride into the quarter-finals at Queen's in London on Thursday, pushed all the way on his favoured grass surface by wildcard Alex Bogdanovic.
The world number five looked the lesser player for much of the contest that he eventually won 4-6, 7-6, 6-4.
"I was lucky to get out of it today," he said.
Bogdanovic, ranked 117 in the world, rattled Roddick by finding the lines on both sides of the court and wrong-footing the American with a powerful backhand.
Bogdanovic broke the famous Roddick serve in the third game and clung on to his lead to take the first set with two big serves of his own.
The pair looked evenly matched throughout the second set with Bogdanovic, 23, saving a set point in the 10th game.
He took the 24-year-old American to the brink in the tiebreak and, but for a challenged line call, would have had match point.
Roddick called for the new Hawkeye technology to track his shot that was called out at 5-5 and it found the ball had in fact clipped the line.
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"I'm a big supporter of Hawkeye... There's a big difference between being down match point and up set point," Roddick said.
The second seed took the tiebreak 7-5. Although he expected to feel more in command on grass after his humiliating first-round exit at the French Open on clay earlier this month, it was not until the seventh game of the third set that he broke the British number three's serve.
Roddick meets another wildcard, Croat Marin Cilic in the quarter-finals. Cilic, 18, the top junior in the world last year, overcame French qualifier Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, second-round victor over defending champion Lleyton Hewitt, 4-6, 6-3, 6-2.
Top seed and French Open champion Rafael Nadal was on the brink of winning his third-round match when the rain came down and play was called off. He was leading Belarussian Max Mirnyi 7-6, 5-3 and about to serve.
Third seed Fernando Gonzalez of Chile advanced stealthily early in the day, beating American Robby Ginepri 6-2, 7-5.
Though he commands none of the headlines like Nadal and Roddick, the Australian Open runner-up, ranked sixth in the world, has some grasscourt pedigree having reached the quarter-finals here last year and at Wimbledon in 2005.
Eighth seed Marat Safin went out 7-6, 7-6 to Ivo Karlovic, the 2.08 metre-tall Croat who comes into his own on grass where he slams down big serves.