Canada’s Félix Auger-Aliassime is off to the third round at the Cincinnati Open tennis tournament after defeating Norway’s Casper Ruud 6-3, 6-1 on Friday.
Auger-Aliassime fired 14 aces to four double faults while winning 86 per cent of his first-serve points.
The Montreal native also broke on five of his 10 opportunities.
Ruud, the seventh seed in the tournament, had zero aces and five double faults and only won 44 per cent of his first-serve points. He broke on his lone opportunity in the match.
Auger-Aliassime will next face Britain’s Jack Draper.
Later in women’s singles action, Leylah Fernandez of Laval, Que., handed Russia’s Diana Shnaider a 6-1, 6-4 loss in third-round play.
No. 3 Aryna Sabalenka also advanced with a 7-5, 6-2 victory over Elina Svitolina, but No. 5 Jasmine Paolini, the runner-up at the French Open and Wimbledon, lost to Mirra Andreeva 3-6, 6-3, 6-2.
Fernandez came back from down 4-1 in the second set after play was suspended because of rain. She broke on four of her 10 chances while firing seven aces to six double faults. Fernandez also won 81 per cent of her first-serve points.
The 21-year-old will face the winner of a matchup between Americans Jessica Pegula and Taylor Townsend in the quarter-finals.
Fernandez was scheduled to play a doubles match later on Friday, with partner Yulia Putintseva of Kazakhstan, against Townsend and Katerina Siniakova of the Czech Republic.
Top men to advance included No. 1 Jannik Sinner, who got a walkover against Jordan Thompson on his 23rd birthday, No. 4 Alex Zverev and No. 6 Andrey Rublev.
But Carlos Alcaraz was not happy, repeatedly smashed his racquet on the court in a rare show of frustration on Friday, and the four-time Grand Slam winner fell to Gael Monfils 4-6, 7-6 (7-5), 6-4. In a match that was suspended by rain on Thursday night with the players in a second-set tiebreaker, the 37-year-old Monfils advanced by taking the last two sets from the second-seeded Alcaraz, who called the loss his “worst match.”
Monfils was back on the court Friday afternoon against No. 15 seed Holger Rune, looking to become the oldest men’s quarter-finalist in Cincinnati in the professional era.