Muguruza into quarters; Raonic ousted in fourth round

Later, Milos Raonic was sent crashing to a shock defeat by Albert Ramos-Vinolas in the French Open fourth round. 

The Canadian eighth seed had been expected to set up a meeting with Stan Wawrinka or Viktor Troicki in the quarter-finals, but could not string any decent form together against his unseeded Spanish opponent who had never been beyond the second round of a major before. 

In a match that lasted just under two and a half hours, Ramos-Vinolas emerged 6-2 6-4 6-4 without ever seeming under too much pressure. 

The 22-year-old Venezuelan-born fourth seed, Muguruza, will next play the winner of the tie between Shelby Rogers of the United States and Irina-Camelia Begu of Romania for a place in the semi-finals. “At the end it is always very tough. She is a player with a lot of experience and I just had to be there,” she said. 

“Quarter-finals is a great run and I am looking forward to improving my result here.” Muguruza is seen as one of the new stars of the women’s game after a breakthrough season in 2015 when she was runner-up to Serena Williams at Wimbledon and made the semis at the WTA Finals. 

But in 30-year-old Kuznetsova she was up against one of the wiliest and experienced players on the women’s circuit with two Grand Slam titles to her name -- the 2004 US Open and the 2009 French Open.