By ANDREW DAMPF and JEROME PUGMIRE AP Sports Writers
PARIS — Naomi Osaka might have had the edge in the fashion contest. In the tennis department, though, top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka was the winner.
Sabalenka beat Osaka, 7-5, 6-3, on Monday to reach the French Open quarterfinals and move one step closer to finally winning the clay-court Grand Slam, where she lost last year’s final to Coco Gauff.
It was the first women’s night match at Roland Garros in three years and Osaka entered the court wearing a golden bomber jacket over her gold sequin playing dress, trailing a tiered train with puffs of tulle.
Sabalenka wore more standard tennis attire: A slightly sheer black flared tennis dress with a red underlayer; plus diamond necklaces.
In the matchup of four-time Grand Slam champions, Sabalenka improved to 3-1 in her career against Osaka, who was playing in the fourth round at Roland Garros for the first time.
Sabalenka overpowered Osaka from the baseline, and produced a huge forehand return winner on her first match point that Osaka barely got her racket on.
Tournament organizers had been criticized for not scheduling more women’s matches at night, with Roland Garros officials responding that women’s best-of-three set matches don’t occupy enough time for TV broadcasters. The men play best-of-five set matches.
Sabalenka won in 1 hour, 27 minutes.
“The atmosphere and the attention that this match brought (is) going to show them that probably for the future they should consider putting at least sometimes women matches at night,” Sabalenka said.
Sabalenka’s quarterfinal opponent will be Diana Shnaider, who beat Madison Keys – the last American woman remaining in contention – 6-3, 3-6, 6-0.
French hopes were dashed following Diane Parry’s 6-3, 6-2 loss to 114th-ranked Maja Chwalinska of Poland.
Chwalinska had never been beyond the second round of any major, and her run is even more impressive considering she came through three qualifying rounds.
Chwalinska’s quarterfinal opponent will be Anna Kalinskaya, who surprised even herself by reaching the last eight after defeating Anastasia Potapova, 6-4, 2-6, 7-6 (10-7).
“Thinking two weeks ago that I will be here, I wouldn’t believe it,” Kalinskaya said. “I would probably laugh with my team.”
Many top women’s players were already eliminated, including Gauff, four-time winner Iga Swiatek and second-ranked Elena Rybakina.
Despite top-ranked Jannik Sinner losing in the second round, Italian fans will have at least two men in the quarterfinals.
Tenth-seeded Flavio Cobolli advanced to his second Grand Slam quarterfinal – and his first here – after beating American Zachary Svajda, 6-2, 6-3, 6-7 (3), 7-6 (5).
“It’s for sure my favorite Grand Slam to play,” Cobolli said after winning on Court Philippe-Chatrier. “We have the best feeling with the surface as Italians.”
A little while after his win, Cobolli – a former youth soccer player at Italian club Roma – joined players from the Paris Saint-Germain team as they paraded the Champions League trophy on Court Philippe-Chatrier. PSG beat Arsenal in the final on Saturday.
Cobolli next faces No. 4 Felix Auger-Aliassime, who beat Alejandro Tabilo, 6-3, 7-5, 6-1, to complete a career set of reaching the last eight at all four majors. The Canadian has never been beyond a Grand Slam semifinal, though.
“Not having Sinner in the semifinals is another opportunity, but you need to be there,” Auger-Aliassime said.
Auger-Aliassime, 25, was dominant on his serve to beat Tabilo, pairing 17 aces with just two double faults while winning 72.7% of his service points and saving all three break points he faced. He also converted five of six break-point opportunities on Tabilo’s serve.
“I’m so happy,” Auger-Aliassime said, in French, during his on-court interview. “It’s a childhood dream to even play here. I came here for the first time when I was maybe 12 and it’s always been a dream to play here. I’m not French. … But I feel at home.”
Auger-Aliassime, whose two deepest Slam runs came in the 2021 and 2025 U.S. Opens where he reached the semifinals, is the highest seed remaining on the top half of the bracket.
Big-serving Matteo Berrettini joined Cobolli in the quarterfinals after beating Juan Manuel Cerundolo, 6-3, 7-6 (2), 7-6 (6). Berrettini last reached the quarterfinals here in 2021 – but hadn’t been back to the tournament since then because of a series of injuries and physical issues.
ARNALDI OUTLASTS TIAFOE
Matteo Arnaldi made it three Italians in last eight when he beat Frances Tiafoe – the last American man in the draw – 7-6 (5), 6-7 (5), 3-6, 7-6 (3), 6-4, in a match that lasted 5 hours, 26 minutes and ended after 1 a.m.
Arnaldi fired 18 aces among his 74 winners and had more in the tank for the fifth set than Tiafoe, although the American still pulled off a few incredible shots in desperation mode.
“I don’t know how I’m standing here, to be honest,” Arnaldi said during his on-court interview. “I played so much in this tournament. … It’s a dream, to be honest, to be here.”
The 25-year-old, who qualified for his first Grand Slam quarterfinal, recounted how he’d gotten to this point: a four-set, 4-hour win over No. 29 seed Tallon Griekspoor of the Netherlands; another four-setter to take down Greek veteran Stefanos Tsitsipas; and a five-setter that was two minutes shy of the 5-hour mark to defeat Belgium’s Raphael Collignon in the third round.
“Today in the third set, I was so tired,” Arnaldi said as applause broke out for him. “But you know, we live to play these matches, and I always dreamed to play a match here at Roland Garros at night like this, these battles, against someone like Frances. I think at one point, it wasn’t tennis, it was just something else. You were just playing with everything you had.
“This is definitely the best match I’ve ever played.”
Each player broke twice during the first set, and both held narrow leads in the tiebreaker before Arnaldi prevailed. Tiafoe squandered a 5-3 lead in the second set but rebounded to force another tiebreaker, this time taking it by winning four of the final five points.
Tiafoe won the third set and was firmly in control, going up a double break in the fourth before serving for the match at 5-4. Instead, Arnaldi played terrific defense and broke Tiafoe on his second opportunity of that game. Arnaldi raced out to a 3-0 lead in the match’s third tiebreaker and didn’t look back.
Down 4-2 in the fifth set, Tiafoe found a new gear one more time, breaking Arnaldi in the eighth game to level it thanks to some precise forehands. Arnaldi responded by running the table in the ninth game to break him back.
The last three matches Tiafoe played in Paris were five-setters; he went the distance to beat Poland’s Hubert Hurkacz and Portugal’s Jaime Faria. He played 19 sets over four rounds, while Arnaldi played 18.
Berrettini and Arnaldi face each other in the quarterfinals, ensuring that at least one Italian man will advance to the semifinals.
VALLEJO FINED $65K FOR SEXIST REMARKS
Adolfo Daniel Vallejo was fined $65,000 by the tournament after he said his second-round match should not have been umpired by a woman, organizers announced on Monday.
Vallejo lost to French teenager Moise Kouame last week after a tense five-set battle that lasted nearly five hours. He later told the tennis website Clay that “this sort of match needs to be umpired by a man.”
Following his 6-3, 7-5, 3-6, 2-6, 7-6 (8) loss, Vallejo added: “It’s very difficult for a woman to do it.”
Players reaching the second round at the French Open receive 130,000 euros ($151,000). Roland Garros director Amelie Mauresmo told reporters at the French Open that “a 65,000 euros” fine was handed down to the player, “representing roughly half of his prize money.” Organizers later clarified that the fine was in dollars, not euros.
“This is clearly unacceptable,” Mauresmo said. “Once again, such remarks have no place here.”
Vallejo, from Paraguay, said the umpire, Ana Carvalho from Brazil, did not control the spectators.
“It has to be refereed by a man, because it’s a very demanding crowd and you need a lot of strength to go against the crowd,” he said. “The crowd was very out of line, but I understand they’re supporting their compatriot. It’s quite an intense crowd and that’s why I was prepared; I already knew it would be like that and, to be honest, it didn’t harm me, but rather strengthened him.”
Vallejo added that Kouame “took up a lot of time on many occasions, lying on the floor or stalling.”
“And it’s not normal for the crowd to be shouting for a full minute without any play. In a match where the physical aspect matters so much, if you give a player a lot of time he’s obviously going to take advantage of it. The truth is it’s also difficult for a referee to manage this situation.”
AP Sports Writer Samuel Petrequin, and AP Fashion Writer Colleen Barry in Milan contributed to this report.