PARIS (AP) — Alexander Zverev won the serving battle and silenced the raucous home crowd, beating French prospect Arthur Fils 6-4, 3-6, 6-3 to reach the Paris Masters quarterfinals on Thursday.
The third-seeded German compiled 16 aces compared to nine for the 20-year-old Fils in their first indoor meeting on a fast court suiting heavy servers with big forehands like Zverev. He improved to 3-1 overall against Fils.
“I am happy I hung in there today. It was a great match,” Zverev said. “He is a great player and has improved a lot this year. I am looking forward to the next few battles we are going to have.”
Zverev, the French Open runner-up, saved three break points in serving for the match at 5-3 and held his nerve with the crowd cheering hard for Fils.
“The atmosphere here is a lot louder than at Roland Garros,” the 27-year-old Zverev said. “It feels the court is smaller and the crowd is on top of you. It is something we don’t get a lot on tour but I love it.”
He next plays 10th-seeded Stefanos Tsitsipas in their 16th career meeting, with Tsitsipas 10-5 up.
The big-serving Greek earlier rallied to beat Francisco Cerundolo 6-7 (1), 6-4, 6-2 to stay in contention to qualify for next month’s ATP Finals in Turin, the year-end tournament gathering the season's top eight players.
Although Tsitsipas was typically strong on serve, hitting nine aces and saving all three break points, he was not as clinical on Cerundolo's serve and converted three of his 11 break-point chances.
Later Thursday, second-seeded Carlos Alcaraz faced 15th-seeded Frenchmen Ugo Humbert and eighth-seeded Grigor Dimitrov needed to beat Arthur Rinderknech to have an outside chance of reaching the ATP Finals. Dimitrov is in 10th race and must reach Sunday's final in Paris. The Bulgarian veteran was runner-up here last year to Novak Djokovic.
In other third-round matches, the 2018 champion Karen Khachanov won 7-6 (5), 6-4 win over Alexei Popyrin.
Australian Jordan Thompson advanced to the first Masters quarterfinal of his career by beating veteran Adrian Mannarino 7-5, 7-6 (5), saving two set points in the second set along the way.
“It’s what we’ve been working towards, these big results at big tournaments,” Thompson said. “It got a little bit squeaky at the end there, but I did well to turn it around.”
Top-ranked Jannik Sinner pulled out of the Paris Masters as did the record seven-time champion Djokovic.
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AP tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis
Jerome Pugmire, The Associated Press
