London, June 18 (IANS) Tommy Paul of the United States continued his march in the HSBC Championships at the Queen’s Club in London, bringing out some of his best tennis to get the better of Botic van de Zandschulp, progressing to the quarterfinals on Thursday.

The 29-year-old Paul came up with a gritty second-round display to defeat Van de Zandschulp 7-6(5), 6-3 and extend his winning streak at the grass-court ATP 500 event to seven matches. Paul, who lifted the title at Queen’s Club in 2024 before missing last year’s event through injury, recovered from an unsteady start and struck a series of brilliant winners to book his return to the quarter-finals.

After dropping serve in the opening game, Paul found himself in a nervy first set that featured four breaks of serve between the pair. However, the eighth seed raised his level when it mattered most, delivering a composed tie-break performance before taking control in the second set.

Having withdrawn from the 2025 edition due to an abdominal injury, Paul has wasted little time making his mark on his return. The American now boasts an impressive 9-2 record at Queen’s Club, according to the Infosys ATP Win/Loss Index, having defeated five Top-50 opponents on his way to the 2024 title.

In the quarter-finals in west London, Paul will face fourth seed Alejandro Davidovich Fokina, who earlier eased past the dangerous Corentin Moutet 6-4, 6-3 in one hour, 39 minutes. Davidovich Fokina now leads the Frenchman 3-0 in their Lexus ATP head-to-head series, having also beaten him in Hamburg last month.

“We know each other very well, so it’s difficult to play against a friend,” Davidovich Fokina said of Moutet. “He’s a very tricky player. You never know what the next shot is going to be… Today, the conditions were hotter, but I knew that I needed to be focused on myself.”

“I was just worried about my end of the court, really, and not worried about playing the other guy,” Paul said in his on-court interview. “I just tried to make my first serves. I think I could have done a better job of that today. I don’t think either of us played too many points where they finished at the net. There were a lot of baseline points, but I think the ball striking was good today,” he said.

–IANS

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