USA’s Paul cruises into French Open quarter-finals

PARIS: American 12th seed Tommy Paul eased into her second consecutive Grand Slam quarter-final at the French Open on Sunday with a straight-sets win over Australia’s Alexei Popyrin.

The 28-year-old raced to a 6-3, 6-3, 6-3 victory on Court Suzanne Lenglen in only an hour and 51 minutes.

Paul, an Australian Open semi-finalist in 2023, will take on either reigning champion Carlos Alcaraz or fellow countryman Ben Shelton in the last eight on Tuesday.

Draper dominates teenager Fonseca to reach French Open last 16

Separately, Kazakhstan’s trickster Alexander Bublik always brings a novel approach to his matches and off court too he defies convention, describing how a three-day trip to Las Vegas to let off steam helped turn around his year.

The 27-year-old reached the fourth round of a Grand Slam for only the second time in his career on Saturday as he beat Portugal’s Henrique Rocha 7-5 6-1 6-2, setting up a clash with Briton’s fifth seed Jack Draper.

Bublik reached a high of 17 in the rankings last year but dropped to 82 in March after a first-round exit at Indian Wells left him questioning whether he had what it took to compete with what he calls the tennis ‘robots’.