Bucharest, Romania (SportsNetwork.com) – Top-seeded Frenchmen Gilles Simon
and Gael Monfils moved into the quarterfinals at the BRD Nastase Tiriac Trophy
tennis event.
The three-time champion Simon got past on-the-mend Serbian wild card Janko
Tipsarevic 7-5, 6-4, while Monfils mauled Russian veteran Mikhail Youzhny 6-1,
6-2 in a pair of matches involving four former top-10 stars on the red clay at
Arenele BNR.
This week’s top-five seeds all reached the quarters, where seven of the eight
seeds altogether found safe passage into the round of eight, including No. 8
Italian Simone Bolelli, who got past Austrian Andreas Haider-Maurer 6-4, 6-4
on Thursday.
Another Day-4 result saw Spaniard Daniel Gimeno-Traver douse Croatian
qualifier Nikola Mektic 7-5, 6-2.
Friday’s quarters will pit Simon against Gimeno-Traver; Monfils versus
Bolelli; third-seeded Ivo Karlovic against seventh-seeded Czech Jiri Vesely;
and fourth-seeded Czech Lukas Rosol versus fifth-seeded Spaniard Guillermo
Garcia-Lopez in a rematch of the 2013 final.
Rosol was last year’s runner-up to Bulgarian Grigor Dimitrov after capturing
the Bucharest title in ’13 by beating Garcia-Lopez in that final.
The 2015 Bucharest champion will earn $86,400.
