World No 5 Stefanos Tsitsipas booked his place in the third round of the Paris Masters on Wednesday with a comfortable 6-3 6-4 win over Britain’s Dan Evans.
The 24-year-old Greek, whose best performance at Bercy came in 2019 when he lost to Novak Djokovic in the quarterfinals, will face either Cameron Norrie, another Briton, or Frenchman Corentin Moutet in the last 16.
Tsitsipas had the edge over Evans from the start and completed his victory in one hour 20 minutes.
With Evans struggling to get into the match and committing a number of unforced errors, Tsitsipas took the initiative by breaking his opponent’s opening service game in both sets.
His own service proved too much for Evans, who was only able to force a single break point, which Tsitsipas saved.
The Greek, winner this year of the Masters 1000 in Monte Carlo in April and finalist in Cincinnati in August, is guaranteed to play the end-of-season ATP Finals in Turin later this month regardless of his performance in Paris.
Italy’s Lorenzo Musetti beat Nikoloz Basilashvili of Georgia 6-4, 6-2 to set up a last-16 meeting with third seed Casper Ruud.
Meanwhile, Former world No 1 Andy Murray said he will have to push himself harder in training if he wants to compete on the ATP Tour after the Briton lost to French wildcard Gilles Simon in the first round of the Paris Masters.
Simon battled back from a set down to beat Murray 4-6 7-5 6-3 on Monday, with the three-time Grand Slam champion suffering from cramp in the second set.
“Having that happen after a set and a half on an indoor court where it’s not particularly hot is not really acceptable,” Murray, who has struggled to regain top form since undergoing two hip surgeries, told reporters.
“It’s nothing to do with my hip. I just think the reality is I need to work harder. Obviously, there’s certain things I can and can’t do nowadays, I need to be a bit more careful with some of the training that I do.
“But I can certainly do more than what I have done and push myself harder than what I have done recently. What I’m trying to do is extremely hard. I need to do exceptional things to still compete.”
