Carlos Alcaraz brush aside Shapovalov to reach 4th round of French Open

On Friday, world number one Carlos Alcaraz crushed Canadian Denis Shapovalov 6-1, 6-4, 6-2 to easily advance to the fourth round of the French Open and go one step closer to winning his second Grand Slam championship.

To set up a fourth-round matchup with Italy’s Lorenzo Musetti, the 17th seed, the Spaniard was ruthless and ruled with an iron fist.

Alcaraz claimed, “I think I played at a good level the entire match.” As I began to commit more errors in the second set than in the first or third, I found myself in a little bit of danger. “But I had to be there, strong psychologically, and I knew that I was going to have my chance to come back.

Alcaraz was zipping winners past the helpless 24-year-old in the opening set, who was clearly struggling to keep up with his opponent’s pace and swiftly went behind 5-0.

The 26th-seeded Canadian smiled broadly when she snatched a game to escape a bagel, but it was only a momentary relief as Alcaraz easily won the first set in 35 minutes.

The 20-year-old Spaniard, who was hoping to build on his U.S. Open victory from the previous year by winning the French Open, slowed down in the second set, which allowed Shapovalov, who had begun to move more fluidly, to take a 4-1 lead.

Order was quickly restored, though, as Alcaraz swept the next five games and nine of the final 10 points to reel him in and take the match by two sets.