Frenchmen Doumbia/Reboul advance on day of upsets in Paris

On a day of doubles upsets at the Rolex Paris Masters, top seeds Marcel Granollers and Horacio Zeballos and second seeds Marcelo Arevalo and Mate Pavic both fell in the second round.

In early action on Thursday, Frenchmen Sadio Doumbia and Fabien Reboul moved past Arevalo and Pavic 7-6(5), 7-6(3) to reach the quarter-finals at the ATP Masters 1000 event.

Competing on home soil, Doumbia and Reboul saved the one break point they faced and won 87 per cent (45/42) of their first-serve points according to Infosys ATP Stats to advance in front of a jubilant crowd after one hour and 43 minutes.

The Frenchmen are chasing their fourth tour-level title of the season and will next play Lloyd Glasspool and Adam Pavlasek after the British-Czech team downed fifth seeds Simone Bolelli and Andrea Vavassori 6-4, 6-4.

Neal Skupski and Michael Venus then shocked Granollers and Zeballos 6-4, 7-6(6). Skupski and Venus arrived in Paris off the back of a final run in Vienna and will take on Ariel Behar and Robert Galloway in the last eight. Behar and Galloway defeated Hugo Nys and Jan Zielinski 4-6, 7-6(2), 10-5.

Despite their early exits, Granollers and Zeballos and Arevalo and Pavic will next head to Turin to compete at the Nitto ATP Finals. The doubles field for the prestigious year-end event (held from 10-17 November) was set on Monday.

In other action, eighth seeds Harri Helivoaara and Henry Patten beat Marin Cilic and Ivan Dodig 6-3, 6-7(5), 10-8. The Finn-British team, who won Wimbledon this year, will play Max Purcell and Jordan Thompson in the quarters after the Australians defeated Santiago Gonzalez and Edouard Roger-Vasselin 6-7(6), 7-6(5), 10-8.

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