Paris: America’s world number 108 Shelby Rogers reached her first Grand Slam quarter-final on Sunday with a 6-3, 6-4 win over Romanian 25th seed Irina Camelia-Begu.
Rogers is just the ninth woman outside of the top 100 to make the last eight in Paris since 1983.
“It’s incredible and I’m really happy that it didn’t start raining,” said Rogers who broke down in tears after the match and had to borrow a handkerchief from television interviewer Marion Bartoli, the former Wimbledon champion.
“I always dreamt of this when I was a little girl in Charleston but never really thought I would reach the quarter-finals in Paris.”
Rogers has now beaten three seeds in her run at Roland Garros having seen off 17th seed Karolina Pliskova in the first round and 10th seed Petra Kvitova in the last 32. She will face Spanish fourth seed Garbine Muguruza for a place in the semi-finals.
Bopanna moves up
India’s tennis star Rohan Bopanna and his men’s doubles partner Florin Mergea stormed into the quarter-finals. The sixth-seeded Indo-Romanian pair outclassed the Brian Baker of the US and Marcus Daniell of New Zealand 6-2, 6-7 (4), 6-1 in one hour and 48 minutes in the third round to enter the last eight stage.
Bopanna and Mergea got the match off to a positive start, taking an important 4-2 lead over their opponents and from there on the duo broke serve twice to win the first set comfortably by a healthy 6-2 margin.
In the second set both the sides displayed their best on the court, winning each game to make it 6-6 and take the set to a tie-breaker.
Baker and Daniell were the dominant side in the tie-breaker as the duo played sensibly to edge past Bopanna-Mergea 7-4 to win the second set and level things up 1-1.
In third and final set, the sixth-seeded pair broke their opponents twice to take a handy 5-1 lead and from there on served brilliantly to win the last game and the set 6-1.
