Auger-Aliassime reaches his first Roland-Garros quarter-final, the cleanest match of his fortnight against Tabilo, Cobolli next

Félix Auger-Aliassime, the fourth seed, beat Chilean Alejandro Tabilo 6-3, 7-5, 6-1 on Court Philippe-Chatrier on Monday evening to reach the quarter-finals of Roland-Garros for the first time in his career, on his eighth appearance at the tournament.

It is the Canadian’s fifth Grand Slam quarter-final overall – after two semi-final runs at the US Open (2021, 2025) and earlier quarter-finals at the Australian Open (2022) and Wimbledon (2021) – and the first time he has reached the last eight at all four majors, becoming the first Canadian man to complete the set.

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The contest was the most controlled of his week. Auger-Aliassime, who had needed five sets to come through Daniel Altmaier in the opening round, four to beat Roman Andrés Burruchaga in the second, and four more to dispatch Brandon Nakashima in the third – losing the opening set in each of those three matches – finally won the first set at the tournament.

He broke twice in the opener to take it 6-3, broke once more in the second to lead 6-5 and served it out, and ran the third 6-1 in 30 minutes against an opponent who, by then, had nothing left to find. Tabilo, the 29-year-old Chilean who was born and raised in Canada before moving to Chile after turning professional, had reached the round of 16 for the first time on his Roland-Garros debut and had earned that round of 16 with a four-match streak that included a fifth-set tie-break survival against French wild card Moïse Kouamé. The contrast in level was clear from the opening exchanges.

Auger-Aliassime – Cobolli next

The path forward for Auger-Aliassime, now the highest-ranked player remaining in the top half of the men’s draw, has cleared since the opening week. Daniil Medvedev, Valentin Vacherot, Cameron Norrie, Jiří Lehečka, Alexander Bublik and Taylor Fritz are all gone – and crucially, world No. 1 Jannik Sinner is gone too, eliminated in the second round by Juan Manuel Cerúndolo.

The Canadian has spent his career at the edge of the conversation about which Canadian man would first lift a Grand Slam singles title. Bianca Andreescu became Canada’s first major singles champion at the 2019 US Open. On the men’s side, the country has produced finalists and semi-finalists – Milos Raonic at Wimbledon 2016, Auger-Aliassime himself twice at the US Open – but no champion.

His quarter-final opponent will be Italian 10th seed Flavio Cobolli, who beat American Zachary Svajda 6-2, 6-3, 6-7(3), 7-6(5) in three hours and 19 minutes earlier on Monday. Cobolli, the only top-15 player left in the men’s upper part of the draw apart from Auger-Aliassime himself, has dropped one set in the tournament – the third-set tie-break to Svajda this morning.