by Cameron Norrie reached the French open round with a bang after defeating British Star Jacob Fearnley.
Norrie secured a likely showdown with Novak Djokovic after playing a surreal game in a surreal match in front of an ear background of explosions and pyrotechnics.
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The DIN was at thousands of Paris Saint-Germain fans who gathered for the Champions League final outside the Princes Parc. This is a stone’s throw from the court-simonne mathieu and showed the game on a large screen.
But Fearnley fought to produce fireworks when the more experienced Norrie stretched his stay in the French capital into the second week.
It will be Norrie’s first appearance in this stage and with Jack Draper, Great Britain has open two men in history in the fourth round for the first time in the fourth round.
Tennis players usually like to play in silence, but this end of Paris sounded more like a war zone.
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Serving was difficult for both men, where explosions almost every time one of them threw the ball.
At some point during a crucial second binding route, Norrie had to completely cancel his service movement in the middle of a series of loud pony.
Fearnley may have overtaken Norrie in the world rankings, but the 23-year-old started nervously in the middle of the deafening noise.
Norrie was a set and two breaks before Fearnley, who had just finished the first whole year on the tour, found his feet and shot the second set.
Despite the disturbance, 29-year-old Norrie kept his nerve in the ties to move two sets.
The noise finally subsided, and the crowd shrank considerably when the impetus approached to leave Norrie to get a 6-3 7-6 (1) 6-2 victory in two hours and 43 minutes.
