PREVIEW | 2023 Paris Masters Quarter-Finals including repeat of DJOKOVIC v RUNE as top clash

The fifth day of action is here at the 2023 Paris Masters with the Quarter-Finals being the order of the day in the French capital with one clash in particular standing out.

Our preview looks ahead to that, with the main talking points from the Paris Masters so far.

The main clash as alluded to sees Novak Djokovic and Holger Rune face off with the latter one of only a few with a positive winning Head to Head against the great Serbian.

Rune is 2-1 up including last year's final and this year in Rome and is starting to look himself ever so slightly again after one of the worst periods of his young career since Wimbledon where he has barely strung a win together and has been ill and injured.

But he has since started winning again since employing Boris Becker. In football, the new manager bounce is a term used and it is the new coach bounce so far for Rune.

He spoke also in hiring Boris Becker that he wanted to gleam the Novak Djokovic secrets ahead of Paris so no doubt it may play a small factor. Djokovic himself was full of praise for Rune and also Becker prior to the tournament and saw it as a great hire for the Dane as a coach that saw many of his Grand Slams won under his tutelege.

Djokovic himself and also Rune played late yesterday with the former seemingly having stomach issues and then taking some pills and came back to win in only the fashion he can so instead of injury doubts, it was more likely something he ate meaning he will hopefully be back to full strength for the clash of the day.

Other ties see the last ATP 1000 winner in Hubert Hurkacz face off against a resurgent Grigor Dimitrov. It is also a Turin themed day.

Stefanos Tsitsipas booked his spot, but Karen Khachanov could still come from absolutely nowhere to be involved in Italy. He is the last placed player still in the reckoning albeit he would likely have to win the title.

Alex de Minaur too could also qualify and is one of the best placed to do so. The Aussie benefited from Jannik Sinner deciding against playing due to scheduling woes and will now take on Andrey Rublev who like Tsitsipas is also confirmed for Turin and is also in great form.

It is very much a line-up full of players playing at their peak and we will have two semi-finals by the end of Friday.