Greece’s 22-year-old tennis sensation Stefanos Tsitsipas, just got his 25th win of the year under his belt, leaping on to the last 16 of the French Open.
This win against Aljaz Bedene sets Tsitsipas as the first Greek player to have reached this stage at Roland Garros.
Bedene and Tsitsipas were 80 minutes in with the score being 6-1 6-2 3-1 in favour of the second before the Slovenian got slowed down by a foot injury.
Tsitsipas will face Grigor Dimitrov next, who had even less time on court against Roberto Carballes, the Spaniard retiring at 1-6 3-6 down with a little over an hour played.
It’s Dimitrov’s first time this far into such a big competition as well, making the upcoming match an extremely interesting duel to watch.
Meanwhile, Tsitsipas’ personalised face masks have been another way the young gun has been scoring points with the media this season.
“Journalism and press and media, I love this a lot. I do understand how it operates, how it works,” he said.
“So for me, you know, I’m a tennis player, and if something works, I’m on the court the next day trying to do the same thing. For me sometimes there isn’t really much for me to say tactical-wise or match-wise because I’m just trying to follow the things that have been working for me.”
“I was a journalist when I was 11, 12 years old. I had this Facebook page, which I very often updated with news about Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Novak Djokovic,” he explained when asked about how he keeps his popularity up.
“I was really into it. Every day after school I would check the results, check the current, latest tennis news. I would update it. It was a lot of fun, I enjoyed doing it.