SANTIAGO, Chile – Blaise Bicknell produced one of the best performances of his career but lost to Chile’s Tomás Barrios in the quarterfinal round of men’s singles tennis at the Pan American Games on Thursday.

Playing on clay in front of a hostile Chilean crowd, he lost 3-6, 7-6, 2-6.

Bicknell started slowly, with a number of errors in his serves and the first set quickly got away from him.

Barrios probably thought he had the victory sealed in the second set, with the score at 5-3, but Bicknell started to fight back and had a response to every return Barrios served up. At this point, Bicknell’s forehand also became too much for Barrios, who made a series of errors of his own, even with the crowd loudly cheering him on. Bicknell took the game back to 6-6, before claiming the tiebreaker 7-2.

The Jamaican started the third and final set stronger than Barrios and took the first game, but Barrios found his nerve to take the set 6-2 and advance to the semi-finals.

Bicknell came into this game as the 426th seeded player in the world, and 15th seed in the tournament, while Barrios, seeded 105th in the world, was the Pan Am Games second seed.

Bicknell must now immediately focus on his next game, which takes place on the same afternoon.

He will team up with Jamaica’s Rowland “Randy” Phillips (world 1780th seed) to take on the Brazilian team of Gustavo Heide (world 202nd seed) and Marcelo Demoliner (world 76th seed) at 6 pm local time, 4 pm Jamaica time.