American Keys strolls into French quarters

No fuss, no drama — Madison Keys’s smooth ride continued at the French Open yesterday as she brushed aside Romanian Mihaela Buzarnescu 6-1 6-4 to reach her first French Open quarter-final.

The American with power to burn was far too strong for Buzarnescu whose dream run came to an abrupt halt. Keys has not dropped a set so far and all the talk that her game was ill-suited to clay now looks redundant.

Make no mistake, the 13th seed will now take some stopping. Not that this Grand Slam run is being greeted with the kind of hullabaloo that accompanied her journey to last year’s US Open final in which she lost to compatriot Sloane Stephens. “I think the US Open, for me, was a lot higher energy and just because it was late at night and all of that,” she said.

“So to be here and just kind of consistently getting through and just being happy with kind of lowdrama matches has been really nice.” Keys admitted in the build-up that she had never watched Buzarnescu in action but quickly got to grips with the unheralded 30-year-old who was playing in the fourth round of a Grand Slam for the first time.

The draw has opened up for Keys and with Czech 26th seed Barbora Strycova or unseeded Kazakh Yulia Putintseva next up she will be favourite to make the semi-finals.