Gilles Simon has maintained his impressive grass-court form ahead of Wimbledon by easing to a straight-sets win over Joao Sousa to reach the quarter-finals of the Nottingham Open.
The second-seeded Simon, who was a semi-finalist at the Queen’s Club last week, won 6-4 6-1 in 73 minutes on Wednesday to set up a last-eight match against Sam Querrey of the United States.
Simon’s chances of a first grass-court title improved after David Ferrer, the top seed at Nottingham, was eliminated in the second round by unseeded Marcos Baghdatis on Tuesday.
Baghdatis, the Australian Open runner-up in 2006, beat Alexander Zverev of Germany 6-3 6-3 in the third round and will play Simone Bolelli next.
Also through to the quarter-finals are Alexandr Dolgopolov, Denis Istomin and fourth-seeded Leonardo Mayer.