#NextGenATP Norwegian Casper Ruud continued to excel at the Rio Open presented by Claro on Thursday. Having reached his maiden ATP semi-final at this event in 2017, the 20-year-old defeated fifth seed Joao Sousa 6-3, 3-6, 6-4 to put himself into the quarter-finals again in Rio de Janeiro.

“I always play far away from home, but Rio always makes me feel very welcome,” said Ruud. “I feel the atmosphere here and it’s great to have the crowd on my side.”

Sousa dug deep after facing a break point to trail 1-5 in the final set, but Ruud hung tough to advance after two hours and 11 minutes. The Norwegian, currently No. 135 in the ATP Rankings, will make his Top 100 debut on Monday if he defeats Laslo Djere of Serbia on Friday.

“It’s a great chance for another 500-level semifinal,” said Ruud. “[Djere] is maybe the favorite in the [ATP] Rankings, but I’ve shown some good tennis before here and hopefully I can again.”

Ruud enjoyed success on the ATP Challenger Tour last year by finishing runner-up at $50,000 events in Braga and Francavilla. He also excelled on bigger stages by reaching the quarter-finals last July at the Swedish Open and coming through qualifying at the Australian Open, Roland Garros and US Open, advancing to the second round at the first two majors of the year.

Djere, who defeated top seed Dominic Thiem in the opening round, continued his inspired tennis with a 6-4, 6-2 victory over Taro Daniel of Japan. The World No. 90 didn’t face a break point against Daniel and won 83 per cent (20/24) of his first-serve points.

Pablo Cuevas of Uruguay produced a statement win over recent Cordoba Open winner Juan Ignacio Londero of Argentina 6-1, 6-4. The 2016 champion wasted no time getting down to business on Quadra Guga Kuerten, dropping just one point on serve (16/17) in the opening set. He continued to dominate the baseline rallies in the second set and secured the win after just 68 minutes.

Awaiting Cuevas in the quarter-finals is Albert Ramos-Vinolas of Spain, who scored an impressive 3-6, 7-5, 6-3 comeback victory over Federico Delbonis of Argentina. Delbonis served for the match at 5-4 in the second set, but Ramos-Vinolas rallied to advance after two hours and 20 minutes.

The Spaniard improves his FedEx ATP Head2Head against Delbonis to 2-3. Ramos-Vinolas trails his FedEx ATP Head2Head with Cuevas 1-6 and the Uruguayan has prevailed in their past five matches.

French wild card Ugo Humbert recorded the biggest win of his career on Thursday by beating World No. 12 Borna Coric 6-3, 6-3 in 80 minutes for a place in the Open 13 Provence quarter-finals.

“My level was good today, very positive,” said the 20-year-old Humbert, a contender to qualify at this year’s Next Gen ATP Finals in Milan. “The atmosphere was great, and it’s always easier when you aren’t the favourite. This was the first time I played a player ranked that high. I was able to stay calm and played well.”

View Marseille Singles Draw | Read More: Humbert Wins Fourth ATP Challenger Crown

Humbert, competing at a career-high No. 75 in the ATP Rankings, broke Coric’s serve three times and will next play German qualifier Matthias Bachinger, who was solid on serve in overcoming Fernando Verdasco, the fifth-seeded Spaniard, 6-4, 6-3 in 77 minutes.

“I watched Ugo in his last match,” said Coric, who will now travel to compete at next week’s Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships. “I tried pretty much everything today. He returned well, mixed up his serve and didn’t miss many balls.”

Russia’s Andrey Rublev backed up his victory over three-time Marseille champion Jo-Wilfried Tsonga with a 6-3, 7-6(2) win over Matteo Berrettini of Italy in one hour and 37 minutes. He will next play Kazakhstani Mikhail Kukushkin, who beat fourth seed Denis Shapovalov on Wednesday.

Third seed David Goffin reached his first ATP Tour quarter-final of the season, battling past home favourite Benoit Paire 6-2, 6-3. After a pair of early breaks, the two were back on serve in the second until Goffin won the rally of the match and broke Paire for a 5-3 lead.

The usually quiet Belgian celebrated the break with a fist pump and a shout to the crowd. He will meet Gilles Simon for the fifth time in their FedEx ATP Head2Head series, which is tied at 2-2.

“Benoit can play very well. I’m happy with the victory tonight,” Goffin said. “I need to go through those kinds of matches in order to improve match after match. Every athlete goes through moments of doubt.”

At the Delray Beach Open presented by VITACOST.com on Wednesday, just after 5:00 pm, 29-year-old Neal Skupski was on Court 1 hitting serves just minutes after reaching the doubles semi-finals. Recording those serves was his brother and partner, 35-year-old Ken Skupski.

“He didn’t feel comfortable on his serve [during the match]. Other players might be thinking, ‘Oh, he doesn’t serve well enough. I’m going to potentially look for someone who can serve better to help get me to that next level’,” Ken said. “I don’t see it like that. My idea is that he’s always going to be my partner. He’s the person who I will always play with… I’m always looking for my brother to do the best he possibly can. And he’s always asking for me to be the best I can be.”

As the Skupski brothers spoke to ATPTour.com later in the evening in the Delray Beach players’ lounge, Bob Bryan and Mike Bryan sat 10 metres away, preparing for a match of their own. The 40-year-old Bryan brothers have lifted 116 tour-level trophies together, and finished No. 1 in the year-end ATP Doubles Team Rankings 10 times.

In some ways, the sibling pairings are similar: the Bryans (Stanford) and the Skupskis (LSU) all attended college, and each team has a righty and a lefty. But in other ways, they’re different.

When Ken graduated from LSU and began his efforts on the professional circuit, there would still be another year before Neal would start studying at university. While the Bryans have competed together throughout their lives, it took until Ken was 30 and Neal was 23 for the Brits to compete alongside one another on the ATP Challenger Tour. Sure, Ken knocked around balls with his brother when they were younger, but just for fun.

In fact, Neal was only a sophomore at LSU when Ken captured his first two ATP Tour titles (w/Colin Fleming). They are playing with one another as professionals for the 136th time this week in Delray Beach.

“You’ve grown up looking at the Bryan Brothers. They’ve had unbelievable success playing doubles together. Obviously the best of all-time. It was tough at first [for us],” Neal said. “Ken is six years older than me and he took on the role of being the leader of the team, sort of the coach, too, because we didn’t have a coach at the time.”

The Skupskis have found success over the past couple of years. In 2018 alone, they won their first team ATP Tour title in Montpellier, and reached two additional finals.

But Ken, as he puts it, is in the ‘twilight’ of his career. The British left-hander is 35 years old with three kids at home. Ken is No. 68 in the ATP Doubles Rankings, while Neal is No. 35, just four spots off his career-high. So if Neal is able to get into ATP Masters 1000 events and even ATP 500 tournaments, but Ken cannot because of his ATP Doubles Ranking, he is more than happy to support his brother from afar.

“It’s always a dream, isn’t it? Once you get to the idea of tennis potentially being a job, then you set serious goals of where you want to get to,” Ken said. “When you’re very, very young, to say you’re going to be making money off the sport and still playing at 35, I’d sign up for it every day of the week.”

And perhaps the best part of the experience is doing it alongside his younger brother. They were raised differently tennis-wise — Ken played junior tournaments every couple of weeks as a kid, while Neal only competed at four or five big events each year. Yet here they are, competing on the ATP Tour together.

“It is obviously nice to travel as a team, as brothers. It’s better than traveling with someone you don’t know on the Tour. Obviously he speaks the same language as me, likes the same things,” Neal said. “We have a lot of advantages of being brothers and playing together.”

“I can shout at him, he can shout at me and I don’t take it personally,” Ken said. “Some people can take offence to things, but I don’t. If I’m not good enough on the day, I know it, he knows it and we move on from it, find a way to get better.”

Ken’s goal is to maintain his ATP Doubles Ranking as best he can so that he can still play with his brother, as he has no intentions of holding his brother back. The 2017 Wimbledon quarter-finalists want to make a deep run at another Grand Slam, potentially compete at the 2020 Olympics and continue progressing daily. Most importantly, they are in it not just as a pair, but as brothers.

“It is a fantastic thing that our family was able to get two brothers to play professional tennis and make a living out of the sport,” Ken said. “These guys, the Bryans, they’re in the same boat. They’re not looking over their shoulder thinking their partner is maybe going to speak to another guy and go off to play other tournaments. They’re in it for the long haul.”

So are the Skupskis.