Wimbledon | Alcaraz and Dimitrov advance to fourth round

(Wimbledon) Alcaraz, defending champion and 3^e The world number one, came close to being eliminated in the third round of Wimbledon on Friday, but he ended up beating American Frances Tiafoe (29).^e) 5-7, 6-2, 4-6, 7-6 (7/2), 6-2.

The 21-year-old Spaniard will face Frenchman Ugo Humbert (16^e) or the American Brandon Nakashima (65^e) to try to reach the quarter-finals.

Tiafoe had reached 8^e Wimbledon final in 2022, a year he lost in the semi-finals of the US Open to Alcaraz who would go on to win the first of his three Grand Slam titles to date.

The American was two points away from breaking the match that would have allowed him to serve for the match at 5-4 in the fourth set.

Dimitrov defeats Monfils

Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov, 10^e world, did not leave a chance to Gaël Monfils (33^e) which he dominated 6-3, 6-4, 6-3 in 1 hour 47 minutes, Friday in the third round of Wimbledon.

For his thirteenth Wimbledon, the 37-year-old Frenchman was overtaken.

The match could have ended very badly since at the end of the seventh game of the third set, Monfils fell at the end of his run, slipped and stopped grimacing and sitting on the ground against a line judge whom he almost knocked over.

Appearing to be suffering from a knee problem, he resumed the match after the change of ends break with the decisive break now against him.

In fact, he was quickly reassured by his knee, and it was pain in his left wrist that worried him.

“I slipped. It was bad luck. I tried not to hurt the lineswoman so I used my wrist and I think I hurt myself a little bit. I was a little worried about the knee, but the knee is fine. The wrist is the problem,” he said, a large ice pack wrapped around the painful joint.

So it is Dimitrov, semi-finalist in 2014, who will face the Russian Daniil Medvedev (5^e world champion and semi-finalist last year) or the German Jan-Lennard Struff (41^e) to try to reach the quarter-finals.

“I’m very happy with how I recovered from yesterday’s match: I was able to come on court and play my tennis. It’s exactly what I was hoping for,” Dimitrov said, without a hint of fatigue on his face or in his voice.

The 2014 semi-finalist had actually played for nearly three and a half hours on Thursday, with rain forcing the organisers to reschedule the second round, initially scheduled for Wednesday, to beat the Chinese Juncheng Shang in five sets.

Monfils also had to play on Thursday, but he only spent a few minutes on the court to finish his match against Stan Wawrinka.