Ukraine’s Elina Svitolina accused Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka of adding fuel to the fire by standing at the net waiting for a handshake she knew would never happen at the end of their French Open quarter final on Tuesday.

“I don’t know. It just was an instinct like I always do after all my matches,” Sabalenka told a press conference, after winning 6-4, 6-4.

Sabalenka skipped her two previous press conferences after being grilled on her personal stance on the war as her country is a key staging area for Russia’s operations.

The Belarusian said she did not feel safe at her press conferences but showed up before the media on Tuesday to clarify her position, taking a clear stance against the war and Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko.

Sabalenka said Svitolina deserved respect from the crowd and should not be booed for not shaking her hand. “I don’t want my country to be in any conflict, I don’t support the war,” Sabalenka said. “I don’t support war, meaning I don’t support (Belarus president) Alexander Lukashenko right now.”

Svitolina had warned she would not shake hands with players from Russia or Belarus following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine last year.

“I don’t know, to be fair, what she was waiting for, because my statements were clear enough about the handshake,” Svitolina, who was booed by the crowd as she walked straight to her bench after losing the match, told a press conference.

Asked if world No.2 Sabalenka was looking to inflame the situation by standing at the net instead of also walking back to her bench, Svitolina said: “Yeah, I think so.”

Czech Karolina Muchova declared the sky was the limit after she stormed into the semi-finals a year after leaving Roland Garros in a wheelchair with an ankle injury.

Muchova’s tearful exit in last year’s third round followed a lengthy spell out with an abdominal problem after the 2021 US Open and she had slipped to No. 235.

But the unseeded 26-year-old has steadily battled back and a 7-5, 6-2 win over 2021 Paris runner-up Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in this year’s quarter-finals is expected to propel her back into the top 20 from the 40s.

Novak touch

Novak Djokovic overcame a first-set blip to beat Russian Karen Khachanov 4-6, 7-6 (7-0), 6-2, 6-4 and reach the semi-finals, staying on course for a record-breaking 23rd men’s singles grand slam title.

The twice Roland Garros champion could not find a weakness in the 11th-seeded Khachanov’s serve at first, but once he took the second-set tie-break there was no looking back for the Serb.

On a court Philippe Chatrier gradually being covered by the shade, the 36-year-old did not have a single break opportunity and looked a tad slow in the opening set, but his metronomic game eventually clicked and there was little Khachanov could do to top his opponent’s march into the last four.

“He was the better player for most of the first two sets, I was struggling to find my rhythm, I came into this a bit sluggish,” Djokovic said.

“Then I played a perfect tie-break and from that moment onwards I played a couple of levels higher, managed to win eight points in a row to finish it off.”

Djokovic, however, was not completely happy with his performance but knew victory would not come easy.

“I missed a couple of easy shots today. These things happen sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. He has a big serve but maybe doesn’t move as well so I tried to expose him and played unpredictable. It was a big fight but that’s what you expect from a grand slam quarter-final.”

An aggressive Alexander Zverev punched his ticket into the quarter-finals with a 6-1, 6-4, 6-3 win over Bulgarian 28th seed Grigor Dimitrov on Monday to raise hopes that his barren grand slam run could finally end.

Ukraine flag cut in two

Paris: A Ukrainian woman had her national flag cut in two by French Open staff because it was ‘too big’, ahead of Tuesday’s quarter-final clash between Ukraine’s Elina Svitolina and Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus.

Anna, who declined to give her family name, waited as the flag was taken away by a Roland Garros employee and was returned to her in two pieces.

“Here at the FFT (French tennis federation) we have nothing against the Ukrainian flag... We would do the same with any other flag,” the employee told Anna.

“I came here to support Elina Svitolina. It’s a flag that I’ve taken everywhere, to stadiums, notably at Euro 2016,” Anna, who lives in France, said. “Now I have two flags,” she added.

Reuters