Barcelona Open: Top seed Alcaraz makes last 16

Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz, the top seed, reached the last 16 of the Barcelona Open by defeating Portuguese Nuno Borges 6-3, 6-1 at Real Club de Tenis Barcelona on Tuesday.

Alcaraz, ranked No 2, will play the winner of the match between Bernabe Zapata Miralles and No 13 seed Roberto Bautista Agut next.

“I’m very happy with the match I played today,” Alcaraz said afterwards, in quotes translated by TennisMajors.

“To come back after a while without playing on clay and win like that is not easy. Also, to see the centre court full like today was great. Every time I play, I don’t plan to put the brakes on. It’s my style of play, it can make me more or less tired but I know my body. It’s a very long year and the demands are very high but there’s no handbrake for me.

“It’s hard to come back to world No 1. The short-term goal is to continue to improve my level, I don’t want to focus on position or points, I want to enjoy the upcoming tournaments.”

Borges, ranked No 79, won against Belarusian Ilya Ivashka (6-2, 6-3) in the previous round of the Barcelona tournament.

This was his first match against Alcaraz on the ATP tour.

Barcelona ATP500, other second-round results (Real Club de Tenis Barcelona, clay, EUR 2.722.480, most recent results first):

• Daniel Evans vs. Matteo Arnaldi
• Pedro Cachin vs. Stefanos Tsitsipas
• Nicolas Jarry vs. Karen Khachanov
• Cameron Norrie vs. Pavel Kotov
• Francesco Passaro vs. Francisco Cerundolo
• Alex De Minaur vs. Alexander Shevchenko
• Diego Schwartzman vs. Jannik Sinner
• Yoshihito Nishioka vs. David Goffin
• Denis Shapovalov vs. Jozef Kovalik
• Emilio Gomez vs. Grigor Dimitrov
• Bernabe Zapata Miralles vs. Roberto Bautista Agut
• Emil Ruusuvuori vs. Frances Tiafoe: tuesday
• Alejandro Davidovich Fokina (10) beat Tomas Martin Etcheverry: 6-3, 6-3
• Casper Ruud (3) beat Ben Shelton: 6-2, 7-6 (1)