Holger Rune and Beatriz Haddad Maia won marathon French Open epics that took nearly eight hours to complete on Monday while Iga Swiatek needed just 31 minutes to reach the quarter-finals.
World number six Rune reached her second straight quarter-final in Paris with her first five-set win.
The 20-year-old Dane claimed a four-hour 7-6 (7/3), 3-6, 6-4, 1-6, 7-6 (10/7) victory over Francisco Cerundolo and will face the 2022 runner-up Casper Ruud in a repeat of last year’s ill-tempered quarter-final.
Rune was booed by the Court Philippe Chatrier crowd for hitting the ball on a double bounce in the fourth game of the third set.
His 23rd seeded Argentine opponent stopped playing, hoping the umpire would call a point for him.
Play continued and Cerundolo, who was called for stoppage interference, stopped serving.
“This is tennis. This is sports. Some umpires, they make mistakes. Some for me; some for him. That’s life,” said Rune.
Cerundolo, playing in the second week of a Slam for the first time, brought the crowd to their feet when he rose to level the match.
In a dramatic decision, Rune survived being 3-4, 0-40 to hold and then break.
He served for the match at 5-4 but the 24-year-old from Buenos Aires fought back to level for 5-5 and held for 6-5 before the match went to a knife-edge super-tiebreak .
Rune finished the match with 48 winners and 73 unforced errors.
“What a sport,” Cerundolo tweeted.
Haddad Maia won the third-longest women’s match at Roland Garros to become the first Brazilian woman in the last eight of a Slam since 1968.
Haddad Maia fought back from a set down and 3-0 down to defeat Sara Sorribes Tormo in three hours and 51 minutes.
The 27-year-old left-hander reached 6-7 (3/7), 6-3, 7-5 against her 132nd Spanish opponent on Court Suzanne Lenglen, also the venue for Rune -Cerundolo clash later in the afternoon.
The bout fell just 16 minutes short of the record four hours and seven minutes Virginie Buisson took to defeat fellow Frenchwoman Noelle van Lottum in the first round in 1995.
Haddad Maia is the first Brazilian woman in a Slam quarter-final since seven-time major winner Maria Bueno in 1968.
He will face world number seven Ons Jabeur of Tunisia for a place in the semi-finals.
“I am very happy and very proud that I did not give up and I think that is why I deserved this victory,” said Haddad Maia.
Haddad Maia, the 14th seed, who saved a match point in her previous round against Ekaterina Alexandrova, is no stranger to energy-sapping duels.
In Rome last month, she dropped a three-hour, 41-minute quarter-final to Anhelina Kalinina — now the second-longest women’s match of 2023.
Defending champion and world number one Swiatek set up a quarter-final against Coco Gauff after Lesia Tsurenko retired from their last-16 clash due to illness after just 31 minutes.
Swiatek was leading 5-1 when 66th-ranked Tsurenko, who called the doctor after experiencing dizziness and shortness of breath, decided not to continue.
In his final round, Swiatek was on court for just 51 minutes in a 6-0, 6-0 blitz of China’s Wang Xinyu.
Gauff, 19, reached the quarter-finals for the third straight year with a 7-5, 6-2 win over Slovakia’s Anna Karolina Schmiedlova.
Last year, Swiatek defeated Gauff 6-1, 6-3 in the final to win the title for the second time.
He holds a 6-0 lead over the American in head-to-head meetings.
“The finals have different rules,” Swiatek said.
“Sometimes these matches are a little different than the other rounds we play during the tournament because of the pressure and everything going on around.”
Jabeur reached the quarter-finals for the first time with a 6-3, 6-1 defeat of Bernarda Pera, who broke the American’s serve eight times.
Jabeur, a Wimbledon and US Open runner-up last year, has now reached at least the quarter-finals of all four Slams.
Fourth-ranked Ruud, runner-up to Rafael Nadal a year ago, defeated in-form Nicolas Jarry of Chile 7-6 (7/3), 7-5, 7-5.
The Norwegian saved 14 of 17 break points and now has a tour-leading 85 clay court wins since 2020.
“It was three very, very difficult sets. How long would it take if we got to the fifth set?” said the 24-year-old after the three-hour, 20-minute battle.
Japan’s Yoshihito Nishioka faces Argentina’s Tomas Martin Etcheverry while Alexander Zverev, a two-time semi-finalist, faces Bulgaria’s Grigor Dimitrov in the night session.
