Top-ranked Alcaraz ousts Shapovalov from French Open

Carlos Alcaraz was simply too much for Denis Shapovalov at the French Open.

The world No. 1 cruised to a 6-1, 6-4, 6-2 win over the 26th-seeded Canadian, whose occasional flashes of brilliance Friday were undone by a string of unforced errors.

A hard-fought second set was bookended by a pair of Alcaraz romps in a match that wrapped up in two hours 10 minutes.

Alcaraz, who will face Italy’s Lorenzo Musetti in the fourth round, set the tone early on his preferred clay-court surface when he broke Shapovalov’s first service game.

Playing in the third round at Roland Garros for the first time in his career, the Canadian showed some fight in avoiding the bagel by coming back from double match point in the sixth game. But Alcaraz put it away on his third set point to take an early advantage.

To Shapovalov’s credit, he showed he could hang with the tournament’s top seed in the second set. At least for a while.

Shapovalov opened with a hard-fought hold that took almost seven minutes to complete.

The former world No. 10 from Richmond Hill, Ont., worked even harder for his first break of the match to go up 2-0 in another marathon game. Alcaraz fought off triple break point, then another break after forcing deuce, before Shapovalov finally prevailed in a game that lasted just shy of nine minutes.

Meanwhile, Canadians Gabriela Dabrowski and Leylah Fernandez are headed for a third-round showdown in women’s doubles.

Ottawa’s Dabrowski and Brazilian partner Luisa Stefani, the eighth-seeded team at Roland Garros, advanced with a 4-6, 6-2, 7-5 win over Hungary’s Dalma Galfi and Katarzyna Piter.

Serving was the difference, with Dabrowski and Stefani committing one double-fault compared with 15 for Galfi and Piter.

Fernandez, from Laval, Que., and American partner Taylor Townsend, seeded 10th, converted five of eight break points in a lopsided 6-2, 6-1 win over Taiwan’s Fang-Hsien Wu and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel.