Holger Rune and Beatriz Haddad Maia on Monday triumphed in marathon French Open epics which took almost eight hours to complete, while Taiwan’s Chan sisters and Hsieh Su-wei advanced to the quarter-finals of the women’s doubles.
World No. 6 Rune reached a second successive quarter-final in Paris with his first-ever five-set win.
The 20-year-old Dane claimed a 7-6 (7/3), 3-6, 6-4, 1-6, 7-6 (10/7) victory against Francisco Cerundolo and faces Casper Ruud in a repeat of last year’s bad-tempered quarter-final.
Photo: AFP
Rune was jeered by the crowd for hitting the ball on a double bounce in the fourth game of the third set.
His 23rd-seeded Argentine opponent stopped playing, expecting the umpire to call the point for him.
Play continued and Cerundolo, who was called for hindrance when he halted, dropped serve.
“This is tennis. This is sports. Some umpires, they make mistakes. Some for me, some for him. That’s life,” Rune said.
Cerundolo, playing in the second week of a Grand Slam for the first time, had the fans on their feet when he hit back to level the match.
In a dramatic decider, Rune survived being 3-4, 0-40 to hold and then break.
He served for the match at 5-4, but the 24-year-old from Buenos Aires hit back to level for 5-5 and held for 6-5 before the match went to a knife-edge super tiebreak.
Rune finished the match with 48 winners and 73 unforced errors.
“What a sport,” Cerundolo wrote on Twitter.
Haddad Maia won the third-longest women’s singles match at Roland Garros to become the first Brazilian woman in the last eight of a Grand Slam since 1968.
Haddad Maia battled from a set and 3-0 down to defeat Sara Sorribes Tormo in 3 hours, 51 minutes.
The 27-year-old left-hander came through 6-7 (3/7), 6-3, 7-5 against her 132nd-ranked Spanish opponent on Court Suzanne Lenglen.
The match was just 16 minutes short of the record 4 hours, 7 minutes it took Virginie Buisson to beat French compatriot Noelle van Lottum in the first round in 1995.
Haddad Maia is the first Brazilian woman in a Grand Slam quarter-final since seven-time major winner Maria Bueno in 1968.
She will face world No. 7 Ons Jabeur of Tunisia for a place in the semi-finals.
“I am very happy and very proud that I didn’t give up, and I think that is why I deserved this victory,” Haddad Maia said.
Defending champion and world No. 1 Iga Swiatek set up a quarter-final with Coco Gauff after Lesia Tsurenko retired from their round-of-16 clash through illness after just 31 minutes.
Swiatek was leading 5-1 when 66th-ranked Tsurenko, who had called the doctor after experiencing dizziness and shortness of breath, decided not to continue.
Gauff, 19, reached the quarter-finals for a third successive year with a 7-5, 6-2 win over Anna Karolina Schmiedlova of Slovakia.
Last year Swiatek defeated Gauff 6-1, 6-3 in the final to win the title for a second time. She holds a 6-0 lead over the American in head-to-head meetings.
“Finals have kind of different rules,” Swiatek said. “Sometimes these matches are a little bit different than the other rounds that we play during the tournament because of the pressure and everything that’s going on around.”
Jabeur powered into the quarter-finals for the first time with a 6-3, 6-1 rout of Bernarda Pera, breaking the American’s serve eight times.
Fourth-ranked Ruud beat in-form Nicolas Jarry of Chile 7-6 (7/3), 7-5, 7-5.
Two-time semi-finalist Alexander Zverev made the quarter-finals for the fifth time in six years with a comfortable 6-1, 6-4, 6-3 over Grigor Dimitrov.
The German faces Tomas Martin Etcheverry after the 49th-ranked Argentine booked a place in a Grand Slam quarter-final for the first time thanks to a 7-6 (10/8), 6-0, 6-1 win over Japan’s Yoshihito Nishioka.
In the third round of the women’s doubles, Taiwanese 14th seeds Latisha Chan and Chan Hao-ching defeated Alize Cornet and Diane Parry of France 7-5, 5-7, 6-1, while Hsieh and Wang Xinyu of China knocked out fifth seeds Demi Schuurs of the Netherlands and Desirae Krawczyk of the US 7-6 (8/6), 6-4.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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