Gilles Simon is the best Frenchman still standing on the tour and likely to lead his country into the Davis Cup quarter-finals against Great Britain next month, if Gaël Monfils and Jo-Wilfried Tsonga do not recover from injury – but he left here another bashed-up loser after three thrilling sets against Kevin Anderson.
The Dog, as they call the 6ft 8in South African, won 6-3, 6-7 (6-8), 6-3 in an hour and 52 minutes, putting 34 aces past the world No13 to bring his tournament total to an astonishing 96 from four matches. Nobody has stood up to the brute speed and precision of his towering serve, although Simon – whose tongue-in-cheek description of himself is the Return Genius – did heroically well in defeat.