From the two Frenchmen, Richard Gasquet emerged: the 33-year-old Bitterrois on Wednesday beat his compatriot Benoît Paire in the second round of the Dubai tournament, a 6-4, 6-4 victory synonymous with quarter-finals.
In the quarterfinals, Gasquet will face the winner of the match between his compatriot Gaël Monfils (9th) and the Japanese Yasutaka Uchiyama (99th).
In the first set, the 56th world player made the break at the right time, in the ninth game, before confirming his serve and pocket the sleeve.
The scenario was repeated in the second run: despite a pair recovery from 4-2 to 4-4, Gasquet took his face off and to conclude on his service game.
The French N.2 has undoubtedly paid for the efforts made on Tuesday: Pair had to fight more than 2.5 hours to get rid of the winner of the 2014 US Open Marin Cilic.
Already largely favorable to Gasquet before their duel in the Emirates, the balance of confrontations between the two players is now eight wins and two defeats for the Bitterrois.
A few hours earlier Wednesday, Pierre-Hugues Herbert lost to Briton Daniel Evans 5-7, 6-3, 6-7 (9/7) after a particularly hungry match – almost three hours of play.
The 28-year-old Frenchman, 78th in the ATP ranking, spoiled three match points in the last set concluded in the tie-break.
He may blame himself for having led comfortably 5-2 in the first set, before losing five consecutive games and seeing the first run fly off 7-5.
In the second set, the native of Schiltigheim (Bas-Rhin) broke on the face-off of Evans while he was used to winning the fourth game, “P2H” winning in stride the round 6-3.
It was finally the Briton who made his first match point in the deciding game of the last set.
In the next round, Evans (37th) will face Russia’s Andrey Rublev (14th), who beat Serbian Filip Krajinovic in straight sets 7-6 (7/3), 6-0.
