By Shrivathsa Sridhar
PARIS (Reuters) – Stefanos Tsitsipas stepped up his bid for an elusive first Grand Slam title as the Greek fifth seed dismantled Austrian qualifier Sebastian Ofner 7-5 6-3 6-0 on Sunday to book his place in the French Open quarter-finals.
Tsitsipas was left broken-hearted after a five-sets defeat by Novak Djokovic in the 2021 Roland Garros final before another loss to the Serbian at January’s Australian Open, but the 24-year-old has barely put a foot wrong in Paris this year.
Tsitsipas, who has only dropped one set in his four matches, will face his biggest test when he meets world number one Carlos Alcaraz in the last eight.
The Greek fifth seed continued his charge by battling back from an early break to wrap up the first set and surged through the next, as Ofner’s hopes of being the first qualifier to make the quarter-finals of the claycourt major since Marcelo Filippini in 1999 faded fast.
The Court Suzanne Lenglen crowd began a Mexican wave in the third set and Ofner soon found himself trailing 5-0 as the world number 118 struggled to deal with the Tsitsipas tsunami.
He was finally put out of his misery by the Greek who closed out the victory on serve.
(Reporting by Shrivathsa Sridhar in Paris, editing by Pritha Sarkar)
