Favoured northerners and young Argentinians. The French Open semi-finals are over!

In Paris, the composition of the quarter-finals is clear. Four interesting matches were played on Monday in the lower part of the tournament. One of them even featured a five-set drama. Who will accompany the main favourites Alcaraz and Djokovic to the last eight?

Casper Ruud

The Norwegian tennis player reached the final here last year and would like to return to more significant performances this year. Along with Ruud, he is one of the favourites at the bottom of the Roland Garros leaderboard. In the eighth round, Ruud took on Chilean Jarry, who knocked him out of the tournament in Geneva ten days ago.

The Norwegian was in trouble in two sets after losing his serve, but he levelled up and always handled the end of sets superbly. He won 7::6, 7::5 and will play his third Grand Slam quarter-final. Compared to last year’s French Open, the Oslo native is playing under more pressure. “I hope I can show my best game in my next match,” he told Roland Garros.

Alexander Zverev

The German tennis player proves that he is still one of the best on the Paris clay. A year ago he was injured here in the semi-final against Nadal and there were concerns before this year’s Grand Slam whether he would be up to his biggest rivals.

He beat Bulgarian Dimitrov, who was among the seeded tennis players, in three sets. In the second set, the nearly two-metre tall German was in a deficit, but from then on he started to dominate on court. He won seven games in a row and after 6::1, 6::4, 6::3 sets, he is happy to advance to his fifth Paris quarter-final.

Tomás Martín Etcheverry

The least known quarter-finalist will be Argentina’s Etcheverry, who has beaten his third seeded opponent in the Grand Slam so far. After Australian De Minaur and Croatian Coric, he also took on Japanese Nishioka.

The first set tiebreak broke the match. The 23-year-old Argentine had to fight off a set point, but won. The rest of the match was a clear-cut affair for him. Etcheverry won 7::6, 6::1, 6::0 and has not lost a set at Roland Garros yet this year. After this year’s second round at the Australian Open, which was his Grand Slam high so far, he is having a thunderous ride in Paris.

The longest match of the day

Another Argentine took on the big favourite Holger Rune. The representative of the South American country in this duel was Francisco Cerundulo, who, like Etcheverry, is 23 years old and, like him, is experiencing the best Grand Slam of his career here. He won even sets against the Dane, so the winner was decided in the fifth set.

It was absolutely even. Both tennis players won almost the same number of fifties and the ratio of winning balls and unforced errors was completely identical for both players. The fate of the set and the whole match was decided by several key situations.

The first two went in Rune’s favour. The 20-year-old Dane fended off his opponent’s break points, levelled at 4:4 and took his opponent’s serve in the next game. The Argentine countered and levelled at 5::5. The decisive moment was the final tiebreak. The tiebreak is played to ten points in these situations. From 6::7 Rune won all the balls and after sets 7::6, 3::6, 6::4, 1::6, 7::6 he equaled his performance at Roland Garros last year.

Next program

Casper Ruud and Holger Rune will face off in the Nordic derby on Wednesday to reach the semi-finals. The second quarter-final in the lower half of the bracket will be a duel between Alexander Zverev and Argentine Etcheverry.

Source : Roland Garros