Norway's Casper Ruud staved off a valiant fightback from Denmark's Holger Rune to win an all-Scandinavian French Open quarter-final on Thursday evening.
The fourth seed had a lightning-quick start to thank as he triumphed 6-1 6-2 3-6 6-3 in two hours and 19 minutes to reach his second successive Roland-Garros semi-final.
With Rune struggling to compose himself early doors - registering five double faults in the opener - Ruud earned the double break in the first and second set to put one foot firmly in the last four.
The Danish sixth seed found a second wind in the third set to keep the fight going, but Ruud broke in the fourth game of the third set to effectively extinguish his Nordic counterpart's hopes of a remarkable turnaround.
Ruud failed to take any of his first four match points - including two on Rune's serve as the crowd got behind the Dane - but a long return from the sixth seed finally settled a gripping contest and saw Ruud set up a final-four battle with Alexander Zverev.
One year on from tearing ankle ligaments in his French Open semi-final against Rafael Nadal and leaving the court in a wheelchair, Zverev survived a second-set wobble to sink Tomas Etcheverry 6-3 3-6 6-4 6-4.
Having already missed two chances to break in the first set, Zverev did not pass up his third opportunity in the seventh game, but Etcheverry capitalised on more serving errors from the German to level the match.
An immediate break to love in the third set would put the Argentine in the ascendancy, but Zverev responded in kind with a five-game winning sequence and missed three set points in the eighth game before successfully serving it out.
By edging a closely-contested fourth set, Zverev kept his hopes of a maiden Grand Slam crown alive, prevailing with three hours and 25 minutes on the board.
In the women's quarter-finals, 14th seed Beatriz Haddad Maia made history for her nation, becoming the first female player from her nation to reach the semi-finals of the Grand Slam in the Open Era.
Despite being taken to three sets in all of her matches since the second round, Haddad Maia upset Tunisian seventh seed Ons Jabeur, prevailing 3-6 7-6[5] 6-1 in two hours and 29 minutes.
Jabeur only managed to take four of the 12 break points she created against the 27-year-old, who found a sixth gear after winning a tense second-set tie-breaker, ultimately clinching the win on a Jabeur forehand error.
Haddad Maia's reward will be a showdown against top seed and holder Iga Swiatek, whose reunion with 2022 final opponent Coco Gauff ended in a straightforward 6-4 6-2 victory.
Swiatek now has seven wins to show from seven meetings with the American 19-year-old, winning 75% of points behind her second serve and producing 14 winners on her forehand side.
Haddad Maia and Swiatek will butt heads in Thursday's semi-final following Aryna Sabalenka's clash with Karolina Muchova. body check tags ::
