Tennis-Zverev reaches seventh French Open quarters after Griekspoor retires

By Karolos Grohmann

PARIS (Reuters) -Third seed Alexander Zverev advanced to the French Open quarter-finals after his opponent Tallon Griekspoor retired midway through the second set with an abdominal injury on Monday.

The Dutchman was 6-4 3-0 down when he called for the medic and after a brief discussion the umpire announced his retirement.

“Unfortunately, this morning and in the warm-up with the last couple of serves that I hit I pulled my abdominal, which (prevented me) from serving full and being able to compete the way I would like,” Griekspoor told a press conference.

“I tried everything in the meantime, made a scan before the match, which showed nothing yet.

“Tried everything with the warm-up. Felt actually okay in the first set even though I didn’t serve harder than 180kmh and went all the way down to 150 at some point.

“So I just wanted to give it a shot, but realised pretty early that it was not going to be my day,” he said.

Griekspoor broke early on but Zverev, seeking a maiden Grand Slam title, broke back twice and landed the first set.

The 28-year-old German, a finalist in Paris last year who has now reached his seventh French Open quarter-final in the last eight years, got two consecutive breaks at the start of the second set to go 3-0 up before Griekspoor called it a day.

Zverev will next play either Briton Cameron Norrie or three-times champion Novak Djokovic, who meet later on Monday.

(Reporting by Karolos Grohmann; Editing by Ken Ferris)