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PARIS:
Novak Djokovic will aim to reach his 15th successive French Open quarter-final on Monday after setting an unwanted Roland Garros record.
The defending champion and 24-time Grand Slam title winner made the last 16 by defeating Italy’s Lorenzo Musetti in a bruising five-set epic which concluded at 3:07 a.m. Sunday.
It was the latest ever finish at Roland Garros.
“I think certain things could have been handled differently,” said the 37-year-old Djokovic.
“There is a certain beauty in winning the match at three in the morning if it is the last of the tournament, but this wasn’t the case.”
On Monday, three-time French Open champion Djokovic faces Argentine 23rd seed Francisco Cerundolo for a place in the last eight.
Victory would give him a record 370th Grand Slam match win.
Cerundolo and Djokovic have never met before but the Argentine stunned world number four Alexander Zverev on clay in Madrid earlier this season on his way to the quarter-finals.
The 25-year-old also made the last 16 in Paris in 2023 where he lost in five sets to Denmark’s Holger Rune.
Zverev, who knocked out 14-time champion Rafael Nadal in the first round, was pushed to the brink by Tallon Griekspoor in the third round where he battled back from 4-1 down in the final set.
The 27-year-old German is playing under the shadow of an ongoing trial in Berlin over allegations of assaulting an ex-girlfriend.
Zverev is in the fourth round at Roland Garros for the seventh consecutive year and is the only player to reach the semi-finals at the last three French Opens.
Rune, a two-time quarter-finalist in Paris, defeated Zverev in straight sets in their only previous meeting on clay in Munich in 2022.
Fifth-seeded Russian Daniil Medvedev takes on Australian 11th seed Alex de Minaur.
Former US Open champion Medvedev reached the quarter-finals in 2021, ending a run of four successive first round losses.
Casper Ruud, the runner-up to Nadal and then Djokovic in the last two years, tackles Taylor Fritz for a quarter-final spot.
Fritz cracked 56 winners past Thanasi Kokkinakis in a five-set third round clash on Saturday.
In the women’s tournament, world number two Aryna Sabalenka, who was a semi-finalist in 2023 and has made at least the last four at her past six Grand Slams, plays American 22nd seed Emma Navarro.
The 23-year-old Navarro is in the last 16 of a Grand Slam for the first time.
Navarro defeated fellow American and recent Strasbourg clay-court champion Madison Keys in the third round.
Former Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina, the fourth seed and the only woman to defeat world number one Iga Swiatek on clay this season, faces experienced Ukrainian 15th seed Elina Svitolina.
Moscow-born French player Varvara Gracheva plays 17-year-old Mirra Andreeva, the Russian teenager who is the youngest woman to reach the last 16 on all three Slam surfaces since Anna Kournikova in 1998.
“I know Varvara pretty well. We’ve been practising together for almost two years, so I know what to expect. She’s at a great level right now,” said Andreeva of her 88th-ranked opponent.
Monday’s other last 16 clash sees Elina Avanesyan, also of Russia, facing Italian 12th seed Jasmine Paolini.
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