Sinner sprints into Roland Garros quarterfinals with win over Rublev

Paris, June 3 (IANS) Top seed Jannik Sinner cruised into his 11th career Grand Slam quarterfinal and third in Roland Garros with a 6-1, 6-3, 6-4 rout of No.17 seed Andrey Rublev.

This was Sinner's 18th consecutive match win at a Grand Slam tournament. Sinner has dropped just 30 games in 12 sets in Paris so far — and by extending his winning streak at Grand Slam events to 18, the world No.1 has tied Andre Agassi, Boris Becker and Mats Wilander for the ninth-longest unbeaten run in the Open era.

Four more wins would secure him not only a first Roland-Garros title in the process, but sole possession of seventh place on that illustrious list. Sinner’s win also gives him sole possession of the most major victories for an Italian man in the Open era.

“I’m very, very happy. We both know each other very well… we’ve played each other so many times, so we try to change up a little bit our game style, and I’m very happy. Things can go very quickly in a bad way in best-of-five; they can go so long, so I’m very happy and proud to finish in three," Sinner said.

Bidding for his own third Roland-Garros quarterfinal, and first since 2022, Rublev kept a first-strike mentality throughout the match — but was summarily dismissed by Sinner’s own strikes as the Italian wrapped up the first set in a half hour.

Sinner hit 25 winners in three sets, never lost serve in the two-hour match, and only faced one break point combined in the last two sets. That came at 2-2 in the third set, but Rublev couldn’t find the court with a backhand return off a second-serve — one of 39 unforced errors the No.17 seed totalled in the match. Sinner hit just 19, Roland Garros reports.

Sinner, who on Monday began his 52nd consecutive week at No. 1 in the ATP rankings, will next play Alexander Bublik, whom he leads 3-1 in their ATP Head2Head series. The World No. 62 Bublik earlier upset fifth seed Jack Draper to become the first Kazakhstani man to reach a singles Grand Slam quarter-final in history.

--IANS

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