Alcaraz blazes into Rotterdam Open quarters as Rune bombs out

The quarter-finals of the Rotterdam Open are set, with Carlos Alcaraz and Alex de Minaur both navigating their way to the last eight while Holger Rune fell in a shock upset on Thursday.

Top seed Alcaraz sent a warning signal to the rest of the draw with his 6-2, 6-1 victory over Andrea Vavassori in just over an hour, confirming his status as favourite to win the tournament across major tennis bookmakers.

The Spaniard dropped just four points on his first serve against Vavassori, breaking five times and winning close to twice as many points as his opponent.

“I’m here to entertain the people, make them happy and enjoy watching my matches,” Alcaraz said after the match, which featured several flashy winners.

“It comes naturally in the moment.

“There are a lot of situations that you cannot practice.

“You just improvise a little bit and it happens.

“Getting the win is really important.

“I’m not looking to do it in every match, but if it comes, it’s really good.”

De Minaur’s victory over Jakub Mensik may not have featured quite as many moments for the highlight reel, but the Australian’s win was impressive nonetheless.

With tennis betting sites putting pre-match odds at -250 to +200 in de Minaur’s favour, the No.3 seed put on a defensive clinic to salute 6-4, 6-4 in under an hour and a half.

“It’s never easy playing Jakub, he’s one of the best servers on tour,” he said afterwards.

“He manages to get a lot of free points and at times it’s quite frustrating.

“One of the key things for me in this type of matchup is to be calm and tell myself that I’m going to give myself chances on return.

“As soon as I walk on court I get those competitive juices.

“No matter if I’m feeling 100% or a bit sick, I know that I am going to do everything I can to win, and that’s just part of my DNA.”

De Minaur will face lucky loser Daniel Altmaier in the quarter-finals, where Bovada has him at -1250 to win.

Alcaraz is also a -1250 fancy for his clash with Pedro Martinez, who upset No.5 seed Rune 6-4, 6-1.

Rune had been at -500 to defeat the predominantly clay-court player, but Martinez took advantage of an error-ridden performance by the Dane to book his spot in the quarter-finals.

In the remaining two quarter-finals, Andrey Rublev will take on Hubert Hurkacz and Stefanos Tsitsipas will face Mattia Bellucci.

Rublev (-151.52) and Tsitsipas (-277.78) are both favoured to advance to the semi-finals by top betting apps.

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