PARIS // Home favourite Jo-Wilfried Tsonga beat fourth seed Tomas Berdych 6-3, 6-2, 6-7, 6-3 at Roland Garros on Sunday to reach the French Open quarter-finals.
Playing in cold, damp conditions, Berdych looked out of sorts and allowed Tsonga to dominate with his powerful serve and shot-making.
The Czech player rallied briefly in the third set as Tsonga’s level dropped, but after a brief scare at the start of the fourth set, Tsonga won five games in a row to move through.
The 14th-seeded Frenchman will next play Japanese fifth seed Kei Nishikori for what would be his second appearance in the French Open semi-finals after previously making it in 2013.
“I was into the match from the start, but he is a great champion and stuck with it,” Tsonga said.
“I had a little bit of a concentration lapse and I had been talking to my coaches about that, and that’s what helped me win in four sets.
“That’s the best match I have played in some time.”
With menacing dark clouds overhead sending down drops of rain there were doubts that the match could get going at all, but when it did Tsonga immediately looked the stronger, breaking in the fourth game to take a 3-1 lead.
Two games later the rain grew in intensity and there was a delay of a few minutes that confused both players and had the umpire working overtime pondering what to do next.
But they all stuck it out courtside and on the resumption Tsonga duly pocketed the opening set. He then breezed through the second set and there looked no way back for Berdych.
The third set though was more evenly balanced with Tsonga failing to serve out for the win at 5-4, and he paid the price in the ensuing tiebreaker.
Out on the Suzanne Lenglen Court, current French No 1 Gilles Simon was defeated in straight sets 6-1, 6-4, 6-2, by last year’s Australian Open winner Stan Wawrinka, who has never reached the semi-finals at Roland Garros.
It took the Swiss one hour and 51 minutes to reach the quarter-finals with his second win over Simon at Roland Garros, the first coming in 2012.
No Frenchman has won at Roland Garros since Yannick Noah in 1983 and before that it was Marcel Bernard in 1946.
Nishikori’s win made him the first Japanese man in 82 years to reach the French Open quarter-finals.
Jiro Satoh was the last Japanese man to enjoy such a run at Paris when he made the semi-finals in 1931 and 1933. Nishikori had not played since Wednesday after scheduled third-round opponent Benjamin Becker withdrew with an injury.
Asked his thoughts about taking on Tsonga in the last eight, Asia’s top player said he expected it to be a “fun match”.
“We haven’t played for a long time, maybe a couple of years,” he said. “But, you know, he was injured and he came back now and he’s coming back very strong. You know, he has a big serve, big forehand. He’s always a dangerous player.”
On the women’s side, former champion Ana Ivanovic returned to the quarter-finals for the first time since her triumph in 2008 after beating ninth-seeded Russian Ekaterina Makarova 7-5, 3-6, 6-1.
Ivanovic will face 19th-seeded Elina Svitolina, who overcame strong resistance from local hope Alize Cornet to reach her first grand slam tournament quarter-final with a 6-2, 7-6 win.
For the first time this year play was disrupted by rain, with both matches suspended for 160 minutes before midday, and players had to deal with gusts of wind after play resumed.
Matches between women’s second-seed Maria Sharapova and 13th seed Lucie Safarova, as well as 21st seed Garbine Muguruza and No 28 Flavia Pennetta, were pushed back to today.
The seventh-seeded Ivanovic, who won the French Open the year after losing in the final, last made the quarter-finals of a major at the Australian Open in 2014.
“Amazing, really,” Ivanovic said. “To be honest, coming in to the tournament I didn’t expect it at all.”
Playing on the Suzanne Lenglen Court, Ivanovic made up for her lack of consistency in the second set with an aggressive display in the decider and closed out the match with a big forehand, her 30th winner of the match.
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