Kevin Anderson was leading Diego Schwartzman 6-1 6-2 4-3 with serve to come, but the Argentine managed to gather two break points. Anderson was cool under this pressure, and solved the problem, held serve to lead 5-3 and be one game from a quarter final.
Schwartzman held, forcing Anderson to serve for the match.
An ace was a good start but four errant forehands led to a break point, which was converted and 5-5.
A forehand put away at the net from Schwartzman followed by two South African forehand errors gave the Argentine three game points.
A double fault was only a blip as a solid backhand winner took him to 6-5.
Two brilliant backhand winners from Schwartzman and two successive double faults from Anderson gave the second service break in a row to Diego and he took the set from the grasp of Kevin 7-5, winning the final four games. 24 unforced errors from Anderson for the set was telling.
Three Anderson forehand winners and two Schwartzman double faults led to a service break in the first game of set four - Anderson 1-0
Errors and a double fault handed the service break back to Schwartzman and games were 1-1
A drop shot winner on break point presented Anderson with the third service break in a row in set four - Anderson 2-1
Overcoming three double faults, Anderson held serve and led 3-1.
A forehand winner was insufficient for Anderson to prevent Schwartzman from holding serve and trail 2-3.
At long last a quick big serving game from Anderson and the lead stretched to 4-2. Schwartzman struggled to 3-4, surviving a double fault, which seemed to be arriving with monotonous regularity in the past two sets.
Schwartzman opened game eight with a sizzling backhand winner but couldn’t follow up with enough and Anderson held for 5-3 - déjà vu set three.
After having three game points, Schwartzman let it slip to deuce, but he hung tough to force Anderson once again to serve for the match.
Failure a second time, Schwartzman winning all four points with pieces of excellence, including an exquisite lob winner. 5-5
The set went to a tie break and Schwartzman streeted the South African who was bereft of any confidence at this point. His lead was deleted and the match score was 6-1 6-2 5-7 6-7(0).
So now Schwartzman was the favourite going into the fifth set, although he had never won a match having lost the opening two sets.
After four straight service breaks, Anderson was at the line attempting to stop the trend.
The fifth game had everything - two forehand winners and a drop shot to perfection from Schwartzman, and an ace, an overhead winner, and a touch backhand winner from Anderson.
However, one error too many cost the sixth seed his serve and Schwartzman led 3-2.
That signalled the end for Anderson - from 30-15 in the seventh game he was broken again and Schwartzman led 5-2.
The eleventh seed collected three match points and on the first of these he delivered an ace to advance to the quarter finals in incredible style 1-6 2-6 7-5 7-6(0) 6-2.
This is Diego’s best Roland Garros performance, passing his third round effort of last year.
It also betters his career high Grand Slam performance which was a fourth round at this years Australian Open.
Another gain for Schwartzman is a new career high live world ranking of 11, previously 12.
Of course this is under potential threat depending on the progress of Schwartzman, Fabio Fognini and Novak Djokovic.
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