PARIS (AP) — It's tough enough for any player to deal with Carlos Alcaraz at the French Open. When you're not at your absolute best against the defending champion, as was the case for Tommy Paul in the quarterfinals Tuesday night, there's no chance.
No. 2 seed Alcaraz returned to the semifinals at Roland-Garros for the third consecutive year with a 6-0, 6-1, 6-4 victory over No. 12 Paul, who had his right thigh heavily taped and was unable to run, serve or hit groundstrokes at full force.
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Tommy Paul of the U.S. plays a shot against Spain's Carlos Alcaraz during their quarterfinal match of the French Tennis Open at the Roland-Garros stadium in Paris, Tuesday, June 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
Spain's Carlos Alcaraz plays a shot against Tommy Paul of the U.S. during their quarterfinal match of the French Tennis Open at the Roland-Garros stadium in Paris, Tuesday, June 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
Tommy Paul of the U.S. plays a shot against Spain's Carlos Alcaraz during their quarterfinal match of the French Tennis Open at the Roland-Garros stadium in Paris, Tuesday, June 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
Spain's Carlos Alcaraz smiles as he plays against Tommy Paul of the U.S. during their quarterfinal match of the French Tennis Open at the Roland-Garros stadium in Paris, Tuesday, June 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
“I’ve felt better, you know?” said Paul, who had leg and abdominal muscle issues during the tournament. “Obviously, I went into the match like, ‘I want to win the match.’ But pretty early on in the match, it was pretty obvious that I wasn’t moving amazing.”
Didn't help his cause that Alcaraz was at his very best.
“Today was one of those days that you're feeling great. You feel like every shot was going to be in, every shot was going to be a winner,” Alcaraz said. “You play with a lot of confidence. No fear of anything.”
It took just 52 minutes for him to collect the first two sets.
The 22-year-old Spaniard compiled a 23-5 edge in winners in that span, and the final totals were 40-13.
“He played some great tennis. Returned very well. Had me on my back foot all the time. Playing so fast,” Paul said. “Even on the changeovers, I felt like he was getting up with 20 seconds left. I was like, ‘You got to slow down.’”
Things got more competitive in the third set, which Paul led 4-3 as some spectators at Court Philippe-Chatrier chanted his first name. But Alcaraz grabbed the next three games to wrap things up after a little more than 1 1/2 hours.
“At Grand Slams, the less time you spend on court, it's great to save energy for the next matches,” said Alcaraz, who is seeking his fifth major trophy. “Can’t ask for a better performance.”
He is the first reigning men's champion in Paris to get back to the semifinals the next year since 14-time French Open champion Rafael Nadal in 2021.
He improved to 20-1 on red clay this season and leads the men's tour with 35 wins and three titles.
Alcaraz's opponent in the semifinals will be No. 8 Lorenzo Musetti, who eliminated No. 15 Frances Tiafoe in four sets earlier Tuesday. The last two men's quarterfinals are Wednesday: No. 1 Jannik Sinner vs. unseeded Alexander Bublik, and No. 3 Alexander Zverev vs. 24-time major champion Novak Djokovic.
Paul, a semifinalist at the 2023 Australian Open, and Tiafoe, a two-time semifinalist at the U.S. Open, were the first American men to get to the round of eight at Roland-Garros since Andre Agassi in 2003 — and the first pair to do so in the same year since Jim Courier and Pete Sampras in 1996.
Since Agassi completed his career Grand Slam by winning the French Open in 1999, U.S. men are now 1-60 against opponents ranked in the top 10 at the clay-court tournament.
Tommy Paul of the U.S. plays a shot against Spain's Carlos Alcaraz during their quarterfinal match of the French Tennis Open at the Roland-Garros stadium in Paris, Tuesday, June 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
Spain's Carlos Alcaraz plays a shot against Tommy Paul of the U.S. during their quarterfinal match of the French Tennis Open at the Roland-Garros stadium in Paris, Tuesday, June 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
Tommy Paul of the U.S. plays a shot against Spain's Carlos Alcaraz during their quarterfinal match of the French Tennis Open at the Roland-Garros stadium in Paris, Tuesday, June 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
Spain's Carlos Alcaraz smiles as he plays against Tommy Paul of the U.S. during their quarterfinal match of the French Tennis Open at the Roland-Garros stadium in Paris, Tuesday, June 3, 2025. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Hezbollah has launched a new weapon against northern Israel in the latest round of fighting: small drones controlled with fiber-optic cables the width of dental floss that avoid electronic detection.
These drones — used widely in the war in Ukraine — are small, hard to track and potentially lethal.
Many drones are susceptible to electronic jamming by air defenses. Jamming can cause a drone to crash or return to its point of origin.
But fiber-optic drones are not controlled remotely. They have a thin cable that connects an operator directly to the drone, making it impossible to electronically jam.
The drones are not infallible because the wind — or other drones — can cause the cables to tangle.
But, “if you know what you’re doing, it’s absolutely deadly,” said Robert Tollast, a drone expert and researcher at the Royal United Services Institute in London, explaining how the drone can fly low and creep up on a target.
Experts say militaries must either intercept the drones, which is difficult due to their small size and short flight path, or find a way to snip the nearly invisible cable.
Hezbollah — the Iran-backed militant group in Lebanon — has mostly been using the fiber optic drones on Israeli soldiers operating in southern Lebanon or towns on the border.
Here’s a closer look at these weapons.
An Israeli military official told AP the fiber optic drones are a relatively new threat during the latest round of fighting with Hezbollah. Hezbollah seems to have turned to them because Israeli air defenses have been successful against larger and more powerful rockets, missiles and other drones, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in line with military guidelines.
Israel believes the drones are made locally and are easy to produce – requiring little more than an off-the-shelf drone, a small amount of explosives, and transparent wire that is readily available on the consumer market, he said.
He called the drones the biggest threat to troops inside Lebanon but said the Israeli military is working on technological solutions. In the meantime, Israel is taking measures on the ground to defend troops, such as adding nets and cages to military vehicles.
The fiber-optic drones are the latest part of a cat-and-mouse race as Israel’s high-tech defenses race to intercept new threats, especially ones that are less sophisticated.
Ran Kochav, a former head of the Israeli military’s air defense command, said Israel is failing in its attempts to defend against the fiber-optic drones.
“They fly very low and very fast, and they are very small, it’s very difficult to detect them, and even after they’re detected, they are really hard to track,” he said.
Kochav said Israel spent years focusing on strengthening its air defense systems to improve protection against rockets and missiles. But drones were not seen as a top priority.
He said Israel should have been following the advances in fiber-optic drones in the war in Ukraine and assumed that like Russia, other Iranian allies would eventually use them.
Throughout the war in Ukraine, Moscow and Kyiv have been engaged in a race to develop new technology.
Russia pummels Ukraine almost nightly with Shahed long-range attack drones — originally from Iran. Although Moscow has made many improvements to the drones, some can still be taken down by electronic jamming.
Fiber-optic drones were developed to get around that problem — although they do not have the same range as a drone that uses a radio link or artificial intelligence to navigate.
In some cases, fiber-optic drones have been recorded with cables extending as far as 31 miles (50 kilometers) said Tollast, the expert in London.
Russia and Ukraine are using many different types of drones “at a phenomenal scale,” he said.
The fiber-optic drones are in such wide use that footage shows front-line Ukrainian towns coated with shiny, fishing line-like strings, resembling massive spiderwebs shimmering in the sunlight.
Israel has sufficient firepower to intercept drones, but the key is early detection, Kochav said.
He explained that Israel already has suitable technology that tracks changes in light, identifies signals and communications, and can recognize the sound of drone propellers.
But he said these monitoring systems haven’t been widely deployed along the northern border.
Over the past weeks, Hezbollah has aired videos through social media platforms and its Al-Manar TV station of attacks with these new drones, especially against Israeli troops in southern Lebanon.
These attacks have captured public attention. One attack killed one Israeli soldier and wounded six others, some of them seriously, last weekend. Another attack, on Tuesday, killed an Israeli civilian contractor in southern Lebanon.
In the attack that killed the soldier, Hezbollah issued a video taken by the drone until it exploded in the middle of troops gathering near a vehicle. Another drone was fired at the same location as a military helicopter landed to evacuate the wounded but narrowly missed.
Hezbollah announced that it began using fiber-optic guided drones for the first time during the round of fighting that began March 2, after using other types of drones for years.
Israel also has a fleet of drones that carry out surveillance and attacks, though not necessarily with the fiber optics cables, to target Hezbollah militants.
Zevik Glidai, a 78-year-old math teacher and volunteer ambulance driver, discovered coils of the translucent fiber-optic cables surrounding a drone that crashed into his backyard in the northern Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona on April 13.
His house is 2 kilometers (1.5 miles) from the Lebanon border. He was sitting at home when he heard a high-pitched shriek and a small crash. His neighbor yelled that the yard was on fire.
The two of them put out the fire with a garden hose but noticed something new: The destroyed drone was surrounded by loops and curls of a white thread.
“We are very worried about these drones because there's no way to shoot it down, because we can’t detect it,” Glidai said.
He said there was no warning siren before the drone crashed into his house, and the bomb squad that responded called it a miracle that nearly 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of explosives failed to detonate.
“They told me, ‘You have a lot of luck,’” said Glidai, who noted that he's lived through several iterations of Hezbollah weapons in his 48 years in Kiryat Shmona. “They picked up all of the pieces that they could pick up, and they left me a few optical fibers as a keepsake.”
Mroue reported from Beirut; Burrows from London.
FILE - A Ukrainian made FPV fibre optic drone flies at a military market place at an undisclosed location in the Kyiv region, Ukraine, Jan. 29, 2025. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)
